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COPYRIGHT DEPOSITS 



Head and Heart 



J. Spangler Kieffer 



TLaOrjfmTa fmOi^fJuaTa. Herodotus 1, 207 



Philadelphia : 

The Reformed Church Publication Board, 

1909. 






Copyright, 1909, 

BY 

J Spangler Kiepfbr. 



;(.A252970 



To 
JOHN SPANGLER KIEFFER, 

NOW FIVE YEARS OLD, AND, IN HIS GENERATION, THE HEAD 
OP THE HOUSE, THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY 
DEDICATED BY HIS GRANDFATHER, 
THE AUTHOR. 



CONTENTS 

PAOB 

I. "The Imperial Power in Human 

Nature" 9 

II, Passionate Belief 16 

III. With the Heart 22 

IV. Intellectual and Moral 30 

V. Intellect and Will 41 

VI. The Inclusiveness of the Truth . 52 

VII. The Other Side 62 

VIII. Mathematical and Moral Cer- 
tainty 68 

IX. Argument and Announcement ... 80 

X. The Principle op Agnosticism .... 90 

XI. "Prior to Proof" 100 

XII. Two Memorable Utterances.... 110 

XIII. An Agnostic's Experiment 119 

XIV. The Knowledge of God 127 

XV. Faith and the Will 137 

XVI. Agreement and Disagreement . . . 147 

XVII. The Known and the Unknown ... 157 

XVIII. The Indestructible Residuum... 167 

XIX. The Question of Immortality 177 

XX. The Imperishable Words of 

Christ 187 

XXI. A Great Hymn 199 

XXII. The Preacher and His Congre- 
gation 209 

5 



6 



Contents 



XXIII. Passion in Preaching 218 

XXIV. "Liberty in Preaching" 225 

XXV. The Accent of Conviction 233 

XXVI. "Mine Own People" 242 

XXVII. The Church's Real Attraction . . 250 

XXVIII. Diamond and Seed 260 

XXIX. " The Captain of My Soul" 268 

XXX. "The Great Companion" 278 

XXXI. The Dividing op the Spoils 288 

XXXII. Hail to the Defeated! 298 

XXXIII. The Significance of Sorrow 308 

XXXIV. The Elect Hour 318 

XXXV. The Black Rock 327 

XXXVI. The Planting op the Oak 335 

XXXVII. The Deserted House 343 



PREFACE. 

The essays contained in this volume appeared 
first in the form of articles contributed to the 
Reformed Church Messenger, with which the 
author has been associated as a contributor for 
twenty-five years. None of them were origin- 
ally intended for any other publicity than that 
which they thus received. In compliance, how- 
ever, with the expressed desire of many of their 
readers, that some of them might be preserved 
in more permanent form, the present selection 
is published. In order to impart to the volume 
some sort of unity and order, such articles have 
been, for the most part, selected, as treat of a 
class of themes sufficiently indicated by its title. 
Along with them, it has been deemed not im- 
proper to include certain others, though not, 
strictly speaking, belonging to the same class. 

J. S. K. 
Hagerstown, Md., Aug. 6, 1909. 



''THE IMPERIAL POWER IN HUMAN 
NATURE.'' 

"It is one of our limitiations to imagine that 
poetry is something less than truth instead of 
its only adequate expression, and that the heart 
is an impulsive child whose vagaries have to be 
checked, instead of the imperial power in human 
nature.'' We have quoted a characteristic 
sentence from ''The Mind of the Master," by Dr. 
John Watson, a volume which has a large part of 
its significance and value in its distinct affirma- 
tion of certain deep, fundamental, spiritual 
truths, liable to be forgotten or disparaged. Of 
what the author says concerning poetry, though 
cordially assenting to it, and firmly believing 
that there is a sense in which, as Mrs. Browning 
says, the poets are '^your only truth-tellers," 
or that, as Matthew Arnold declares we may some 
day learn to say, "poetry is the reality, philo- 
sophy the illusion, " it is not our purpose at present 
directly to speak. We would, ho-wever, venture 
to say a few words concerning what is here very 
aptly called the imperial power of our being. We 
are interested in this clear and striking affirmation 
of the supremacy (the word 'heart' being properly 
understood) of the heart. 
9 



10 The Imperial Poxcer in Human Nature, 

Of the intellect and the things pertaining to 
the life intellectual, it is hardly possible to speak 
too highly, provided room is left to speak more 
highly still of another constituent element of our 
complex being. We shall quarrel with no one 
for paying great honor to the human understand- 
ing, if it be conceded that still greater honor is 
due to that power whose behests the under- 
standing in some sense obeys. We shall willingly 
bow before this throne, if we may be permitted to 
bow with a still deeper reverence before the power 
behind the throne. The intellect may be kingly, 
but the heart is imperial. The affections are 
elemental, determining, sovereign. To love is 
more than to know. Knowledge follows in the 
wake of love; it cannot be said that love necessar- 
ily follows in the wake of knowledge. 

At the root of all knowledge lies some form of 
affection. "The very basis and beginning of in- 
tellect, the first inducement to the exercise thereof, 
is," as a certain philosopher has said, ''attrac- 
tion towards, or affection for, some object." 
The law of the primacy of the affections in relation 
to the intellect would seem to be universal, hold- 
ng good in regard to all kinds of knowledge. 
But most of all is the operation of it perceptible 
in the highest realms of truth, with reference to 
the knowledge of God and of all spiritual truth. 
Here knowledge without feeling is absolutely 
impossible; ''it supposes," as Dr. Hodge says? 



The Imperial Power in Human Nature. 11 

"the most essential characteristics of the object 
to be unperceived.'^ This is St. Paul's declara- 
tion, that knowledge without love is nothing. 
This is his ajfirmation not only in the famous 
13th chapter of I Corinthians, but also in the 8th 
chapter, where he says: "If any man think 
that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing 
yet as he ought to know. But if any man love 
God, the same is known of Him." This, also; 
is St. John's declaration: "Every one that 
loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He 
that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is 
love." And, in so declaring, these apostles were 
but reiterating a law which had previously been 
laid down by their own Master, when He said: 
"He that hath my words and keepeth them, he 
it is that loveth me; and he that loveth me shall 
be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and 
will manifest mj^self to him. " These words imply 
that, in regard to our Savior's person and all that 
pertains to Him, love, expressing itself by obed- 
ience (without which there can be no genuine 
love of Him), is the principle of manifestation or 
revelation. The same deep truth is indeed often 
elsewhere affirmed by our Savior, as for example, 
where he promises the highest knowledge (that, 
namely, which is involved in the vision of God) 
not to acuteness of intelligence, but to purity 
of heart : "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they 
hall see God." 



12 The Imperial Power in Human Nature. 

This pre-eminence of the affectional elements 
of our nature, though often forgotten^ is never- 
theless found to be repeatedly and strongly 
affirmed, by a long succession, among human 
writers, of those who have thought most deeply 
upon the subject. We would merely call atten- 
tion to the following distinct expression, by Prof. 
Tayler Lewis, of what we have been trying to 
say: ''The emotional, in view of the true and 
the right, the evil and th€ false, is a higher thing 
than the intellectual perception of them, even 
could we suppose such separable cognition. We 
do not rightly see the true, or truly see the right, 
unless we love it; we do not truly see the evil or 
the false, unless we have the opposite affection. '' 

The sovereignty of the affections is clearly 
evident from the fact that it is these, chiefly, 
that determine character. It is our affections, 
above all, that ultimately make us what we are; 
for it is actions that determine character, and 
affections (in the sense in which we are using the 
word) that determine actions. It is not the 
knowledge, but the love, of what is right, that 
will lead a man to the doing of it. Tell us what 
a man thinks, or knows, or even believes (in a 
certain not unusual sense of the word) and we 
have as yet no sufficient clue to his character. 
There are men who are, as Bacon says: "scientid 
tanquam angeli alati, cupiditatihus vero tanquam 
serpentes qui humi replant/' — in knowledge like 



The Imperial Power in Human Nature. 13 

winged angels, but in passions like creeping 
serpents. Bacon himself, indeed, was an instance 
of an almost flawless intellect combined with a 
moral character full of weaknesses and flaws. 
Nor is there anything more common than this 
fatal discrepancy between intellect and character 
this painful dualism between the things which a 
man knows, and the things which he does. It is 
the source of a great part of man's misery; it is 
the fountain of much of the sadness and pathos 
of human life. That one sees and approves what 
is right, but pursues what is wrong, is the mourn- 
ful theme, not only of a portion of the 7th chapter 
of Romans, but of many a beautifully expressed 
lamentation by Latin or Greek poet. Knowl- 
edge has in itself no power to compel conduct 
and form character; it is dependent upon a force 
lying back of itself to give it the power which it 
ought to have; it is not possible to infer, simply 
from what a man thinks or knows what the man 
himself actually is. 

But tell us what a man likes ; what his affections 
are set upon; what he thinks most of and cares 
most for; what his ideal is; what he is bending 
his energies to attain, — and instantly we are on 
the trail of the man's character. For we invari- 
ably become like the thing that we like. It is 
the thing that we care most for that determines 
our conduct and assimilates our character. Af- 
fections set on earthly things produce an earthly 



14 The Imperial Power in Human Nature. 

character, and affections set on heavenly things 
produce a heavenly character. We are insens- 
ibly drawn towards and assimilated to the objects 
on which our hearts are fixed. This is the law 
by which all character is formed. This, above all, 
is the principle on which Christian character is 
developed, — "We all, with open face beholding 
as in a glass the glorj^ of the Lord, are changed 
into the same image from glory to glory, even as 
by the Spirit of the Lord.'^ But let no one 
suppose that this transforming vision is one 
vouchsafed to intellectual perception; it is the 
same vision which our Lord promises to purity of 
heart; it is the vision which he alone beholds, 
which he alone is capable of beholding, in whose 
heart the love of the Lord resides and reigns. 

Many minor indications there are of what may 
be called the primacy of the affections ; one or two 
of which only we have space briefly to mention. 
It is characteristic of the affections, it is a mark 
of their superior rank, that they are incapable of 
serving for pay. Whatever they may do, must 
of necessity, by the very law of their nature, be 
*' all for love, and nothing for reward. '' Intellect 
may be hired; there is nothing in its nature to 
prevent it. Intellectual ability comes into the 
market-place, and is not necessarily degraded by 
so doing; it will serve you, and serve you honor- 
ably and faithfully for suitable recompense. 
But all the wealth of the world cannot purchase 



The Imperial Power in Human Nature. 15 

one particle of affection. The affections never 
come to market; they scorn the market-place; 
they take no pay; it is of their very nature to 
serve, but, whomsoever they may serve, they will 
serve no one for hire. They go their own way, 
following the higher law of their own being. 

Finally, affection never becomes weary. There 
is a weariness of body, and a weariness of 
mind, but not properly speaking, a weariness of 
heart. In this sense, among others, ''love never 
faileth.*' It knows no fatigue; it travels on in 
the greatness of its strength. When we love, we 
love on, unconscious of any lassitude, defiant of 
all fatigue. When the body breaks down, and 
the mind becomes weary with a great weariness, 
the affections are still un jaded and fresh. This 
is one mark of their being higher up in the scale of 
our being. There is in them something of the 
vitality and power of immortality. 



II 

PASSIONATE BELIEF. 

Belief is never at its best until it becomes pas- 
sionate. To believe, in the proper sense of the 
word, is the highest act of which a man is capable, 
and the source of all admirable and beneficent 
actions. It is this that makes men strong, to do, 
to suffer, to conquer; he is thrice himself, it has 
been said, who has a Belief. ''Belief, said one 
the other night," so writes Carlyle in his Journal, 
"has done immense evil: witness Knipper- 
doUing and the Anabaptists, etc. 'True,' re- 
sponded I, with vehemence, almost with fury, 
'true, belief has done some evil in the world; but 
it has done all the good that was ever done in it; 
from the time when Moses saw the burning Bush 
and believed it to be God appointing him deliverer 
of His people, down to the last act of belief that 
you and I executed. Good never comes from 
aught else.'" If one carefully considers the 
nature and the evident capabilities of belief, he 
will have some glimpse of the reason for the 
prodigious emphasis which the New Testament 
lays upon belief, and the prodigious achievements 
which it attributes to believers. He will have 
some vision of the deep, spiritual meaning of our 
16 



Passionate Belief. 17 

Savior's words when he says, ^' These signs shall 
follow them that believe : In my name shall they 
cast out devils ; they shall speak with new tongues ; 
they shall take up serpents; and if they drink 
any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they 
shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recov- 
er. " And it will not seem to him an over-state- 
ment when the writer of the Epistle to the He- 
brews affirms of the believers of previous times 
that they '' subdued kingdoms, wrought right- 
eousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths 
of lions, quenched the violence of fire, out of 
weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in 
fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. " 

But it is necessary to discriminate ; for the word 
'belief is capable of being used in two very widely 
different senses. As actually used, it often stands 
for something almost as different as can be from 
the mighty meaning of the word as it stands in 
the New Testament and in the Apostles' Creed. 
The word 'belief is often, and not improperly, 
made to signify acquiescence in and acceptance 
of some logically demonstrated truth. It is 
belief intellectual and philosophical; and it is 
good as far as it goes; we have nothing to say 
against it. We are simply affirming that this 
intellectual assent is not the belief of which we 
have been speaking; is not the mighty, changing, 
conquering, wonder-working force which the 
New Testament intends when it uses this great 



18 Passionate Belief. 

word. Indeed, it is not, necessarily and in itself, 
a forceful thing at all. This is one of the principal 
characteristics of it, — its want of energy and 
compelling power. It is marked, as could be 
shown in many wa^^s, by a singular insufficiency 
and incompetence. It is as if it ought to rule, 
yet could not; it has all the marks of sovereignty, 
with one fatal exception, namely, that of the 
ruling power. It stands there, to use a phrase 
of Burke's, ''in all the nakedness and solitude of 
metaphysical abstraction." Such simply intel- 
lectual and philosophical belief is solitary, and, 
because solitary, is, as far as regards the trans- 
forming of character and the doing of mighty 
deeds, impotent and unproductive; whereas, the 
belief that is belief is the most powerful and pro- 
ductive energy that a human life can know. 

It is as if all good things in the world were the 
result of combination and concurrence. Nothing, 
standing by itself alone, can be excellent ; but only 
as it is blended with something else. It is not 
only of man, but of everything that has life, of 
every vital principle or force, that it holds true 
that it is ''not good to be alone." It is only 
when belief in the sense we have indicated is 
combined with something else, to which we can 
give no better name than that of passion, that it 
is endued with power. When it becomes passion- 
ate, then its nakedness is clothed, its barrenness 
is changed into fertility, and its impotence into 



Passionate Belief. 19 

energy. It is passionate belief that wields the 
sceptre ; it is the passion of it that puts transform- 
ing and conquering power into any belief a man 
may hold. The intellect may give light, but it 
cannot supply warmth; it may show the way, 
but it cannot furnish motive power. The secret 
forces whereby our complex and mysterious nature 
is moved to action, lie not in the realm of the 
intellect (important and absolutely indispens- 
able to all wise action as that part of our being is), 
but in the deeper realm of the affections. It is 
the belief which has its root in this deep region, 
and draws from thence a spirit of passionate 
devotion, that alone possesses power. Nay, it 
may well be questioned whether any other sort 
of belief is at all worthy of this high name; 
whether every other sort of belief is not, in fact, 
a shadowy and unreal thing. For a man^s 
Belief, what is it other than his Ideal? And his 
Ideal, what is it other than the thing which is to 
him the highest and loveliest of all objects; the 
thing which he thinks most of and cares most for? 
And what would it be other than a contradiction 
in terms to say that the thing which a man cares 
most for is one which he is capable of regarding 
without feelings of passionate attachment and 
devotion? Belief, properly understood, is, in 
its very nature, passionate. 

It is in accordance with this law that our 



20 Passionate Belief. 

Christian belief is, primarily, not in any proposi- 
tion, or set of propositions, but in a Person. It 
is because, however we may believe in proposi- 
tions, we cannot love them ; we are so constituted 
that we are able, properly speaking, to love only 
persons. And so our religion consists, first and 
most of all, in belief in our personal Savior, Jesus 
Christ. Whatever truths we may need to believe 
concerning Him, whatever doctrines it may be 
necessary for us to receive by reason of Him, our 
first, fundamental, and all-comprehending act of 
belief is in Him. In Him alone we can believe 
with a belief that is passionate with all the passion 
of which our nature is capable. We cannot so 
believe in any doctrine, however fundamental 
and necessary ; it does not make the same appeal 
to our affections. Still less can we so believe in 
those things which philosophy would present to 
us instead of our personal Savior; not in any 
"stream of tendency;" not in "the Power not 
ourselves that makes for righetousness, " of which 
Matthew Arnold speaks ; not in Herbert Spencer's 
"infinite and eternal Energy." We cannot wor- 
ship a Tendency ; nor pour out the wealth of our 
affection upon a Power; nor be so devoted to an 
Energy as to be willing to die for it. But God 
has given to us His Only Son, Jesus Christ; nay, 
in Him God has Himself drawn near unto us and 
manifested Himself unto us in personal human 
form. Him we can worship and love; Him 



Passionate Belief. 21 

we can admire and adore, and He is the 
only one whom it is safe for us to admire 
and adore, with all the admiration and 
adoration of which our souls are capable; to 
Him we can be devoted with that intense affec- 
tion which is the ultimate source within us of all 
knowledge and all power. The belief in Jesus 
Christ, the man who died for men on Calvary, is 
of necessity a passionate belief ; it could not exist 
apart from passionateness. To take away the 
passion, is to take away the power, of it. To 
make it a thing of the intellect, exclusively or 
mainly, is to rob it of its conquering energy, to 
despoil it of its sceptre and all its kingly character. 
To believe in Jesus Christ is the deepest, the most 
significant, the most influential thing a man can 
do; and it is this because it proceeds from the 
deepest part of him, the region in which the will 
and the affections dwell, and carries with it (as 
it belongs to that which is imperial to do) all the 
combined capabilities and powers of his myster- 
ious being. ''With the heart, man belie veth 
unto righteousness." Nor could there well be a 
greater mistake than that of supposing that there 
may be a belief in Christ, in the New Testament 
sense of the word, other than the passionate 
belief of the heart; than that of substituting 
belief in propositions, or truths, or doctrines 
concerning Christ (important as all these are) for 
belief in Christ Himself. 



Ill 

WITH THE HEART. 

There is a beautiful and striking French saying 
which tells us that "great thoughts come from 
the heart." It seems to imply a distinction 
according to which, while ordinarily and usually 
thoughts come from the mind, if there is any 
thought which is singled out from the rest as 
great and extraordinary, it is characteristic of it 
that it comes from the heart. It is a poetic, 
rather than a scientific, saying; the truth of which 
will be best pecreived by those who are of a poetic 
spirit. It is a saying, also, the scope of which 
might well be extended, so as to include other 
things besides thoughts. Not only great thoughts, 
but great actions also, may in a certain sense be 
said to proceed from that part of our mysterious 
nature which it is usual to describe as "heart.'' 
It is often said that nothing great is ever accom- 
plished without enthusiasm. The German philo- 
sopher, Hegel, says that "nothing great is ever 
done without passion." Now, passion and en- 
thusiasm are things, not of the head, but of the 
heart. Certain it is that the highest moral and 
spiritual act of which man is capable is per- 
formed with the heart. "With the heart," says 
22 



With the Heart. 23 

St, Paul, ''man believeth unto righteousness/' 
The verb which he uses is impersonal and passive; 
what he says is, literally, ''with the heart it is 
believed;" that is, beheving is characteristically 
a thing of the heart. 

There are actions to the very idea of which it 
belongs that they cannot be performed otherwise 
than with the heart. There may indeed be the 
semblance of such performance; to all outward 
appearance, the thing may be done, and done 
otherwise than with the heart; but the act thus 
performed proves to have in it no virtue and no 
validity. It fails, so to speak, for want of heart. 
There are resolutions which are entirely unpro- 
ductive of the beneficent results anticipated from 
them; it is because they were passed without, 
rather than with, the heart, that is, by a cold, 
negative, passive, simply acquiescent vote, hav- 
ing in them no warmth and fervor of genuine 
desire, conviction and resolution. There are 
laws enacted from which great consequences are 
expected, but which for some reason wholly fail 
to produce these consequences, proving ineffec- 
tual and futile, remaining, as men are accustomed 
to say, a "dead letter" on the statute-book; in- 
capable of being, or at least failing to be, enforced 
and put into execution. It is because of the 
manner in which they were enacted; there was 
no heart in it ; they are not the genuine expression 
of the "moral sentiment" of the community; 



24 With the Heart. 

they do not come from the depths of the passion- 
ate beUefs, desires, convictions and determina- 
tions of the people. There would seem to be a 
general law, according to which, within the 
sphere of those things which relate to the lives, 
conduct and welfare of men, nothing can be 
accomplished without the action, or against the 
veto, of that imperial part of us which is often 
denominated "the heart." This is the region 
in which the great motive forces have their ori- 
gin; this is the seat of attachment, affection, de- 
sire, passion; nay, in a certain deep sense, of 
thought and knowledge, too. However it may 
be with inferior thoughts and inferior actions, the 
great thoughts and the great actions ''come 
from the heart." If this is true, it must be true 
most of all of the sovereign act of believing. 

There is a belief, it is true, which is a purely 
intellectual act, being the acquiescence in and 
acceptance of truth by the mind. That is to 
say, certain propositions or statements are 
made, and are substantiated by sufficient proof, 
and we mentally accept them and believe them 
to be true. Upon a certain question argument 
is instituted, proceeding step by step to the con- 
clusion, and we, following the process, finally 
accept the conclusion on the strength of the 
argument and the logic. The case is one of 
evidence and proof, and the act is one of which 
our minds are entirely capable. But, whatever 



With the Heart, 25 

may be thought of this form of behef, it is evi- 
dently as different as can be from what the New 
Testament means by believing; this is a thing of 
which the mind by itself is not capable. In the 
New Testament ''he that believeth" is not he 
that believes a certain statement, or proposition, 
or doctrine, but he that believes in Jesus Christ. 
To believe a statement is one thing ; to believe in 
a person is another. To accept a conclusion 
arrived at by argument, or to believe in a fact 
substantiated by evidence, is one thing; to be- 
lieve in the incarnate Son of God, and ''that God 
hath raised Him from the dead" is another. 
The former is, the latter is not, an act capable of 
being performed by the intellect alone. "Believe 
on the Lord Jesus Christ" is the constant com- 
mand of the New Testament. "I believe in God 
the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ, His 
only begotten Son, our Lord," is the constant 
affirmation of the Christian Church in her confes- 
sion of faith. This kind of believing, it is evident, 
is other and more than an intellectual act. Be- 
lieving in Jesus Christ, in this sense, is not essen- 
tially different from loving and obeying Him; 
and these are acts which are not appropriate to 
the mind, nor capable of being performed other- 
wise than by the will and the affections. When 
a man believes he believes not with the cold and 
ineffective assent of the mind, but with the pas- 
sionate and powerful desire, attachment and 
devotion of the heart. 



26 With the Heart. 

That belief is a thing of the heart results from 
the fact that believing is the supreme act of 
which man is capable, and can, therefore, effect- 
ively be performed only by that which is supreme 
within him. Now it would seem as if, in the 
Scriptures, '' heart '^ were an expression for that 
which is sovereign and supreme in man's being. 
It would seem to signify, not so much any single, 
particular faculty, or power, or constituent ele- 
ment of his nature, as, rather, that in him which 
is deepest, most central, most comprehensive, 
most vitally related to all the rest. It is not so 
much a particular part of him, distinguished 
from all other parts, as that in him in which all 
the parts come together and coalesce into one. 
In every living organism there is something cen- 
tral, that is, to which all points of the circum- 
ference are equally related; something capital, 
that is, to which the rest of the organism is re- 
lated as the body to the head ; something radical, 
that is, from which all the rest grows, as from a 
root; something cardinal or pivotal, that is, on 
which all the rest turns, as on a hinge or pivot; 
something vital, that is, on which the life of the 
organism depends. Now, in man's being this 
central, capital, radical, cardinal, pivotal, vital 
thing the Scriptures call "the heart." It is that 
which is deepest, most determining, most domi- 
nant in man's soul; from which all his thoughts, 
desires, intentions, resolutions, actions proceed; 



With the Heart, 27 

which assenting, the whole man assents; which 
refusing, the whole man refuses. It is, as it were, 
an expression for the whole soul. 

To say, therefore, that it is with the heart 
that man believes is equivalent to saying that he 
believes with his whole soul; that believing is 
performed, not by the separate action of any 
particular part of man's being as distinguished 
from the rest, but by the united action of the 
combined capabilities and powers of his entire 
being. No single part of him, no particular 
faculty or power, is sufficient for the accomplish- 
ment of this great work. It is an often quoted 
saying of Goethe's that "whatever a man does 
greatly, he does with his whole nature." Now, 
believing is the one thing of which, above all 
others, it may be said that it is done ''greatly." 
It is a great action, and it is greatly performed. 
It is the supreme achievement of which a man 
is capable. He is at his highest and best, not 
when he is merely thinking, knowing, arguing, 
concluding, but when, by an act which includes 
all these activities and much more besides, he 
''believes." And, just for this reason, believing 
is a thing which can be done only by our whole 
nature, the intellect, the emotions, the will, all 
concurring in this supreme act. It can be done 
only by that which stands for, by that which 
in a certain sense is, our entire nature. But this 
is evidently just what the Scriptures mean by 
"the heart." 



28 With the Heart. 

Inferior actions, it may be, are in some sense 
capable of being performed by this or that part of 
our being, acting separately and independently. 
There are times when the intellectual, or the 
emotional, or the volitional part of the soul 
may be active without special reference to the 
others. Now the man is thinking; now he is 
simply feeling; now he is acting. Especially 
may the intellect be said to be capable of such 
separate and independent action; when a scien- 
tific investigation is being conducted, it is not by 
the heart, but by the mind, that it is being con- 
ducted. What has been said, however, is true 
only with certain qualifications, and in regard to 
matters of inferior importance. When it comes 
to matters of supreme importance, when the act 
in question is the sovereign act of believing, such 
independent action is no longer either sufficient 
or possible. Beheving must be done by the in- 
tellect, the emotions, the will, acting together. 
That is, it must be done with the whole soul; 
that is, it must be done ''with the heart." 

The soul is like an army, which, though it is 
one, and under the authority of one commander- 
in-chief, is composed of different parts, or 
"branches of the service," capable, at times 
and according to circumstances, of acting sepa- 
rately. It may, at this or that particular time, 
be only a part of the army that is in action. 
Now it is a skirmish of infantry that is taking 



With the Heart. 29 

place ; and now it is a cavalry reconnoissance that 
is being made; and now it is an artillery duel 
that is being fought. But now there is a great 
change; evidently a critical hour has arrived, 
and a supreme act is about to be performed; 
the whole army, infantry, cavalry and artillery, 
is in motion and action. It is a ''general en- 
gagement;" it is Gettysburg. 

What a general engagement like that of Gettys- 
burg is to an infantry skirmish, or a cavalry 
reconnoissance, or an artillery duel, that the 
supreme act of believing is to any act of which 
any particular part of our being is separately and 
independently capable. When it comes to be- 
lieving, all the forces of the soul put themselves 
into motion and action. Intellect, emotions, 
will — all are there and all are active; all are 
active under the guidance and command of that 
moral and spiritual part of our being which is 
the supreme thing within us. For believing, in 
the New Testament sense of the word, is the 
highest act of which man is capable; and that 
which is highest can be performed only by that 
which is highest. It is with the whole soul; it 
is "with the heart," in the New Testament 
sense of that expression, that "man believeth 
unto righteousness." 



IV 

INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL. 

Perhaps one of the best preservatives against 
certain dangers by which the process of seeking 
ard obtaining intellectual culture is attended, 
consists in a clear recognition of the natural and 
constitutional limitations to which the human 
intellect is subject. Everything is good in its 
own place and within its own bounds ; transgress- 
ing these, it is no longer entirely good, and may 
even become more or less injurious. It is a good 
part of wisdom to perceive and observe limita- 
tions. Probably the chief reason why "a little 
learning is a dangerous thing" is, that the very 
littleness of it tends to blind its possessor to the 
necessary limitations of all learning, whether 
little or much. The intellect has its place, within 
which it is inestimably serviceable and useful; 
but even it, great as it is, cannot, without detri- 
ment, depart from its place, nor transgress its 
natural limitations, without running the risk of 
causing error and mischief. The way of the 
transgressor (taking the word in its original and 
natural meaning, according to the etymology of 
it) is always hard. Of the intellect, it may be 
said, as is sometimes said of fire or water, that 
30 



Intellectual and Moral. 31 

it is "a good servant, but a bad master." And, 
perhaps, its characteristic fault is that of assum- 
ing to be a master, instead of a servant. The 
intellect is naturally forward, self-confident, 
assuming; whatever else it may be accused of, 
it cannot be accused of bashfulness. It has a 
genius for ''claiming;" it manifests a tendency to 
lay claim, as men say, to ''all in sight." It is not 
characteristic of it to "sit down in the lowest 
place;" it does not say to any other part of our 
nature, "After you;" it would be first. Being 
of the surface, it would claim to be of the foun- 
dation; being "a burning and shining light," or 
lamp, it would assume to be the sun ; holding the 
office of prime minister, it would aspire to the 
place of monarch. And, so undeniably brilliant 
is it in its own nature, as compared with other 
and less conspicuous parts of our being, and so 
numerous and brilliant have been its achieve- 
ments, that its claims are plausibly made and 
are often readily conceded. 

Nevertheless, it is possible to show in many 
ways that, great as the intellect is, its place in 
our nature is a secondary and subordinate one; 
that there is a part of us more interesting and 
significant, more influential and powerful, how- 
ever it may seem to be less so ; and that it is when 
recognizing their subservience to the moral and 
spiritual part of our being that the intellect and 
intellectual culture are at their best. Upon this 



32 Intellectual and Moral. 

subject of the priority of the moral, as related to 
the intellectual, we remember to have been much 
struck, a good many years ago, with a certain 
passage in the writings of an English author, 
who was himself a man of brilliant intellectual 
qualities, and whom no one w^ould accuse of a 
disposition unjustly to disparage the intellect 
or the things pertaining to the intellectual life. 
This passage, which we have taken the pains to 
look up for partial quotation here, is as follow^s: 

"Strength of Will is the quality most needing cultiva- 
tion in mankind. Will is the central force which gives 
strength and greatness to character. We over-estimate 
the value of Talent, because it dazzles us; and we are apt 
to underrate the importance of Will, because its works 
are less shining. Talent gracefully adorns life; but it is 
Will which carries us victoriously through the struggle. 
Intellect is the torch which lights us on our way; Will 
is the strong arm which rough-hews the path for us. 
* * * No one, I suppose, will accuse me of deifying 
Obstinacj^ or mere brute WUl; nor of depreciating In- 
tellect. But we have had too many dithyrambs in honor 
of mere Intelligence; and the older I grow the clearer I 
see that Intellect is not the highest faculty in man, although 
the most brilliant. Knowledge, after all, is not the great- 
est thing in life; it is not the 'be-all and the end-all here.' 
Life is not Science. The light of the Intellect is truly a 
precious light; but its end and aim is simply to shine. 
The moral nature of man is more sacred in my eyes than 
his intellectual nature. I know they cannot be divorced 
— that without intelligence we should be brutes — but it 
is the tendency of our gaping, wondering dispositions to 
give pre-eminence to those faculties which most astonish 



Intellectual and Moral. 33 

us. Strength of character seldom, if ever, astonishes; 
goodness, lovingness and quiet self-sacrifice are worth all 
the talents in the world." 

This, it seems to us, expresses in a just and 
striking manner one aspect of the relation and 
the difference between the intellectual and the 
moral nature of man. The two belong together; 
they may not be divorced; the cultivation of 
neither may be neglected. Nevertheless, brilliant 
as it is, admirable as its achievements are, and 
necessary as is that intellectual culture, without 
which we should be barbarians, the intellect 
bears this unmistakable mark of secondary rank, 
that it is for illumination, and not for action; 
for guidance, and not for motive power. If it 
be so, as has often been said, that ''conduct is 
three-fourths of life;" and that this world is a 
world "in which there is little to be known and 
much to be done," then it cannot be that the 
faculty which enables us to see while we act is 
greater than the faculty which enables us to act. 
Of great significance and importance is the 
torch which lights our path; but of still greater 
significance and importance is the power which 
propels us in our course. Now, the intellect is 
not for propulsion; it is simply for illumination 
and guidance; the propelling power comes from 
another quarter of our being. It is one thing to 
know, and another and greater thing to do; 
'Hhe doing power" is what we most need; and 



34 Intellectual and Moral. 

this intellectual culture is not in itself capable^ 
of begetting. Nay, even when carried far, it 
may leave the possessor of it weak and incapable 
in this respect; it is an old complaint that men 
may '^know the right, and yet the wrong pur- 
sue." There is ground for believing in the gen- 
eral union of intellectual and moral excellence; 
but yet it is well known that intellectual ability 
and moral depravity may exist in the same 
person. Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, had so strong a 
belief in this general union that, where intellec- 
tual ability seemed to be found in combination 
with moral depravity, he was often inclined to 
deny its existence altogether. Yet he was often 
obliged to recognize the possibility, and did not 
fail to remark upon the weakness and unworthi- 
ness of intellectual cleverness unaccompnaied by 
moral integrity and capability of right action. 
His biographer remarks of him that he used to 
say: ''Mere intellectual acuteness, divested as 
it is, in too many cases, of all that is comprehen- 
sive and great and good, is to me more revolting 
than the most helpless imbecility, seeming to be 
almost like the spirit of Mephistopheles.'' 

The intellect, we say, is not for propulsion; it 
has no ability to impel men forward in the path 
which it serves to point out and illumine. Intel- 
lectual culture, important as it is, is in itself in- 
capable of bestowing that power of right action 
which is our greatest need for the proper man- 



Intellectual and Moral. 35 

agement of the affairs of our lives. This, how- 
ever, is only one of its hmitations. When we 
come to what might be considered its own pe- 
cuhar and exclusive province, namely, the 
ascertainment of truth, we find that it is by no 
means wholly exempt from limitations even 
there. It becomes apparent that the light of 
the intellect is that of a torch, and not of a sun; 
the world of truth is too vast and mysterious to 
be sufficiently illumined by its rays. There are, 
it is true, certain portions of the kingdom of 
truth in which its light cannot be said to be in- 
sufficient; there its jurisdiction is complete, and 
its conclusions incapable of being disputed. In 
the field of mathematical and physical science 
the intellect reigns supreme. It is because here 
it is left alone, within its own bounds, coming 
into contact and collision with no superior force. 
Here it sees with that "dry light" which is essen- 
tial to perfect intellectual vision, encountering 
none of that refracting moisture which proceeds 
from the mists of human interest and prejudice. 
Here it is at liberty to go directly to its object, 
unswerved from its course by any deflecting 
tides of human passion. Here, accordingly, 
there is nothing to obscure the clearness of its 
judgments, or to impair the certainty and finality 
of its conclusions. It is entirely different, how- 
ever, when it leaves this field and comes to deal 
with those truths which relate to human conduct 



36 Intellectual and Moral. 

and welfare, and have to do with the agitations 
of human life. Here the ''dry light" is gone, and 
the deflecting tides are present. Here the intel- 
lect seems to lose its sovereignty, and gives token 
of obeying a power more sovereign than itself. 
Something blurs its vision; sw^erves it from its 
course; robs its conclusions of that mathematical 
certainty and finality which was once their 
glory. It is because it has passed beyond cer- 
tain bounds, has entered into a different realm 
of truth, and has come into contact and conflict 
with a power more imperial than itself, and which 
shows itself capable of contravening and vetoing 
its proceedings and its conclusions. 

''From the principal parts of Nature, Reason 
and Passion," says Hobbes, "have proceeded two 
kinds of learning, mathematical and dogmatical. 
The former is free from controversy, because it 
consisteth in comparing figure and motion only, 
in w^hich things truth and the interest of men 
oppose not each other. But in the other there 
is nothing indisputable, because it compares men, 
and meddles with their interest and profit." 
Unfortunately for the intellect, this latter kind 
of truth is the higher and more important; the 
questions which meddle with human interest and 
profit are just the principal questions. And it 
is just in regard to these that the intellect shows 
itself incapable of putting an end to the contro- 
versy. 



Intellectual and Moral. 37 

It is signijBcant that the great social and moral 
questions which agitate the world of human 
affairs are not generally settled by exclusively 
intellectual methods. It would seem as if the 
intellect ought to be able to settle them; is not 
that what it is for? Yet, in point of fact, this is 
seldom done. The intellect seems to have no 
power to decide such questions, as a problem in 
geometry is solved, by a mathematical demon- 
stration, compelling the acquiescence and accept- 
ance of all concerned. Here, on the contrary, the 
logic of the intellect seems incapable of bringing 
us to a similar certainty. Here ''nothing is in- 
disputable;" there are alwaj^s reasons for and 
against; there seems to be no good reason why 
the argument should not go on forever. It is 
characteristic of such questions, for the most 
part, that they are decided finally in a practical 
manner. The agitation, when it has reached 
its most critical juncture, takes on a practical 
form, and comes to its settlement by other than 
theoretical methods. It was thus that, in our 
own country, the question of slavery was finally 
decided. It was not decided by the logic of 
argument; as far as theory and disputation are 
concerned, the arguments for and against slavery 
might be going on at this hour. When the agi- 
tation had reached its crisis, the question was 
taken up and settled by what men learned to 
call the ''logic of events," bringing certain things 



38 Intellectual and Moral. 

to pass which none had the power, and eventu- 
ally none the willingness, to gainsay. It is prob- 
able that the question by which the minds of 
the citizens of the United States are at present 
being so greatly agitated, the question of so- 
called ''imperialism," will likewise come to its 
final solution in a practical manner. It is evi- 
dent that it will not be settled by argument; 
one is struck with the inconclusiveness of the 
disputation, with the really strong reasons which 
may be adduced both for and against the pro- 
posed policy. It is not probable that either side 
will, by mere force of argument, gain general 
acceptance for its views and beliefs. This ques- 
tion, too, will find its settlement by means of 
experiment and action, not by the logic of argu- 
ment, but by the more conclusive logic of events. 
The higher v/e ascend in the realms of truth, 
the more we become aware of a certain relative 
disability of the intellect, and a certain insuffi- 
ciency, as a means of ascertaining truth, of ex- 
clusively intellectual methods. The ability and 
competency of the understanding and the power 
of logic are at their highest in the field of mathe- 
matical and natural science; they are at their 
lowest when dealing with moral and spiritual 
truth. Truth is of many kinds; and the world 
of truth is a vast, complex and mysterious world. 
That which is highest without us makes its 
appeal to that which is deepest within us. The 



Intellectual and Moral. 39 

knowledge of that truth which is highest in its 
own nature, and which is most vitally related to 
human welfare and destiny, comes not by the 
intellect alone; comes not without the exercise 
of those other and higher powers of our being, 
the will and the affections. The things that are 
greatest can be known only through love and 
obedience. One can know God only by loving 
and obeying Him; one can know the truth only 
by loving it and giving oneself to it. It is not 
the knowing of the doctrine that leads to the 
doing of the will, but the doing of the will that 
leads to the knowing of the doctrine. With the 
reception of the most far-reaching, vital and 
affecting truths the heart has more to do than 
the brain. 

No one will accuse us, we trust, of depreciat- 
ing intellect, or disparaging intellectual culture, 
or putting a slight value upon the things pertain- 
ing to the intellectual life. The case is one of 
loving ^'not Caesar less, but Rome more." What 
w^e have been saying consists simply of a few of 
those fundamental truths, the rem^embrance of 
w^hich may serve as a preservative and safeguard 
against those dangers from which the process of 
intellectual culture is confessedly not exempt. 
Great is the mind of man; but this is not the 
greatest part of his mysterious nature ; the great- 
est part of him lies in his will and his affections. 
Let homage be paid to the intellect; let still 



40 Intellectual and Moral. 

greater reverence be rendered to the heart, which 
is a more imperial power. It is a great thing to 
know, but a greater thing to love. And, how- 
ever important intellectual culture may be, he 
has paid too high a price for it who has sought 
it alone, and sought it exclusively for its own 
sake, ''who has aspired to know, instead of to 
love, and finds himself at last amid a world of 
barren facts and lifeless theories, loving none 
and adoring nothing." 

*'The night has a thousand eyes, 
And the day but one; 
Yet the light of a whole world dies 
With the setting sun. 

"The mind has a thousand eyes, 
And the heart but one; 
Yet the light of a whole life dies, 
When love is done." 



V. 
INTELLECT AND WILL. 

In reading that interesting work, the Life and 
Letters of Phillips Brooks, the writer found 
nothing more interesting than the account therein 
contained of the gradual process of development 
and change which that extraordinary man under- 
went in regard to the question of the relation 
between the intellect and the v/ill. This change 
was not a mere circumstance or incident in the 
life of the man; it was, rather, coincident and 
co-extensive with the life itself; it was, indeed, 
as one of the most pervasive, so also one of the 
most significant and characteristic things in the 
man^s career. The question of the relation 
between intellect and will, the intellectual and 
the moral, doctrine and duty, dogma and life, 
was with Phillips Brooks one of the first things 
and one of the last. And the clear recognition 
of the truth in regard to this matter, which he 
was from the beginning traveling towards, and 
at which he eventually arrived, must be regarded 
as in a large measure the secret source of his 
extraordinary influence and power as a preacher. 

The natural temperament of Phillips Brooks 

41 



42 Intellect and Will. 

was, as his biogragher says, ''predominantly 
intellectual;" and the intellectual atmosphere 
in which he was brought up, his education at 
Harvard University, and the circumstance of his 
living in an age which ascribed the supremacy 
to the intellect, all conspired to confirm and 
strengthen this natural and original bent. He 
was one of those who loved to know; ''a voracious 
devourer of ideas;" "to know for himself, to 
understand that he might believe, had been his 
ambition. " In the first stages of his development, 
it is said, he ''assigned the lead to the reason;" 
and this predominantly intellectual view was 
conspicuous in the preaching of his early days in 
the ministry. Yet it had always been one of his 
ruling ideas "that one did not reach the truth 
solely by the intellectual process." And by 
degrees he came to perceive that, as the knowl- 
edge of the truth is not arrived at solely, so it 
is not arrived at chiefly, by intellectual means 
and methods; that the action of the intellect in 
regard to this matter is not primary, but alto- 
gether secondary ; that the knowledge of religious 
truth comes, not by the activity of any particular 
faculty of man's being, but by that of the unified 
totality of his powers; and that this activity 
takes place under the dominance and direction, 
not of the intellectual, but of the moral part of 
him. Thus, by an inward revolution, he was led 
to reverse his original position. From believing 



Intellect and Will. 43 

in the prmiacy of the intellect, he came to believe 
in the primacy of the will. Having begun by 
holding an intellectual view of ethics, he ended 
by holding an ethical view of intelligence. Hav- 
ing at first, as regards the approach to religion, 
ascribed the initiative to the intellect, he even- 
tually came to perceive that that initiative be- 
longed to the will, as the central, sovereign 
and all-comprehending element of man's being. 

It may be instructive to observe two or three 
of the successive steps by which this transition 
was accomplished. Early intimation was not 
wanting, as it never is wanting in any genuine 
development, of what the final issue was to be. 
Already during the years when he was a student 
in the Theological Seminary at Alexandria, Va., 
we find evidences of the existence in him of an- 
other attitude or mood, struggling with his intel- 
lectualism and threatening to gain the supremacy 
over it. In his own person he exhibited a rare 
combination; his biographer speaks of ''his 
capacity of being quickly roused into a glowing 
enthusiasm, of blazing up into a consuming fire, 
under the contact of ideas or truths presented 
to his mind. For truth to him did not rest with 
an appeal to the intellect but stirred his whole 
being, his emotional nature, and ended in the 
will, where it buried itself deeply, calling for 
action." His abundant note-books of this 
period show that he was constantly brooding 



44 Intellect and Will. 

over the problem of the relation between intellect 
and will; how to take the things of the intellect, 
ideas, truths, theories, doctrines, philosophies, 
and make them effective in the region of the will ; 
how to turn them into action, to translate them 
into conduct. ''For abstract ideas as such, 
for purely speculative conclusions in themselves, 
he felt no attraction, nor had he use for them 
unless he saw in them some practical relation 
to real life in the world. " Yet all this was with- 
out any clear perception of the truth which he 
came finally to hold; he still seemed to believe 
in a certain priority of ideas, theories, doctrines; 
the question was, how to take these, the chiefly 
important things in the case, and make them 
what they ought to be, using the v/ill as a means 
for this purpose. He was as yet far from recog- 
nizing the essential priority of the will, as related 
to the intellect, and that, in a deep sense, ideas, 
theories, doctrines are the outgrowth and pro- 
duct of the will, instead of being things inde- 
pendently originated by the intellect, and to be 
dealt with afterwards by the will, as a subordi- 
nate and subservient instrument. Nevertheless 
it is deeply significant to find Phillips Brooks, 
even as a student, groping after the great truth 
which was to become a sort of guiding-star to 
his life, and coming thus early upon the trail of 
that important principle which was to be in so 
great a degree the secret source of his power, 



Intellect and Will. 45 

as it has been of the power of so many others 
who have deeply influenced their fellow-men. 

The next step which we notice in the process 
of development and transition, is found in a ser- 
mon preached in the earlier days of his ministry. 
in Philadelphia, in 1865, immediately after the 
assassination of President Lincoln. The theme 
of the discourse was the life and character of 
Lincoln; and from what is said of it in the 
biography, we quote the following: 

"The sermon also indicates a change, a forward step 
in the development of PhilHps Brooks. He was now 
beginning to pass out of the youthful worship of the 
intellect as the highest quality in man. That worship 
had attended his way through college, through seminary, 
through the earlier days of his ministry. It would still 
require many years before it would cease to control his 
character. Yet even when he was making his prepara- 
tory studies at Alexandria, he had been confronted with 
the question of the hidden relationship between the 
intellect and the will, or how ideas could be made effective 
in the development of moral character. When Lincoln 
died, the question was on the lips of many, who were 
forecasting the estimate to be made of him by posterity, 
whether or not he were an intellectual man, or whether 
his greatness was not exclusively in the moral sphere. 
There was a certain tone of resentment in Phillips Brooks' 
soul that such an issue should be raised. Already he had 
begun the solution of his own life-problem." 

From the sermon itself we quote the following 

passage : 

"As to the moral and mental powers which distinguish 
him, * * * the most remarkable thing is the way in which 



46 Intellect and Will 

they blend with one another, so that it is next to impos- 
sible to examine them in separation. A great many peo- 
ple have discussed very crudely whether Abraham Lin- 
coln was an intellectual man or not, as if intellect were a 
thing always of the same sort, which you could precipitate 
from the other constituents of a man's nature. The fact 
is that in all the simplest characters the line between the 
mental and moral natures is always vague and indis- 
tinct. They run together, and in their best combination 
you are unable to discriminate, in the wisdom which is 
their result, how much is moral and how much is intel- 
lectual. You are unable to tell whether in the wise acta 
and words which issue from such a life, there is more of 
the righteousness which comes of a clear conscience or 
of the sagacity that comes of a clear brain." 

As late as 1878, in two lectures on the ''Teach- 
ing of Religion/' delivered before the students of 
Yale Divinity School, we find him still ascribing 
a certain superiority or initiative to the intellectual 
powers. In these he ''assumed that truth came 
first to the reason, then from the reason to the 
feelings, and finally from the feelings to the 
mil." Yet, even here, there are abundant evi- 
dences of change and progress. For, while still 
holding the usual division of the human powers 
into intellect, feeling and will, he protests 
against breaking up the unity of man; affirms 
that there are other methods of knowing than 
through the intellect alone; and maintains that 
''the full perception of the truth must come 
through the quickened feeling, and above all, 
through the obedient will." Still more do we 



Intellect and Will. 47 

find evidences of progress in the Bohlen Lectures, 
on ''The Influence of Jesus," delivered in 1879. 
Speaking of the last of these lectures, which 
treats of the influence of Jesus on the intellectual 
life of man, the biographer says: 

"In the first place he refuses to give the intellect in 
man the supremacy when taken by itself. He has said 
this before, but now repeats it with deeper conviction. 
In speaking of the person of Christ, he asks the questions, 
How does Christ compare in intellectual power with other 
men? How did He estimate the intellect? Was His 
intellect sufficient to account for the unique position He 
holds in the world's history as the mightiest force that has 
controlled the development of humanity? He finds the 
answer by turning to the fourth gospel, which gives us the 
most that we know about the mind of Jesus. It is the intel- 
lectual gospel, because there is in it one constantly recur- 
ring word. That word is 'truth,' which is distinctly a 
word of the intellect. * * * 

"He takes up the word 'truth' as it is used in the fourth 
gospel, finding that in every instance it is employed in a 
sense different from that of the schools. In its scholastic 
sense it is detached from life and made synonymous with 
knowledge. But knowledge is no word for Jesus. With 
information for the head alone, detached from its relations 
to the whole nature, Jesus has no concern. Truth was 
something which set the whole man free. It is a moral 
thing, for he who does not receive it is not merely a doubter 
but a liar. Truth was something which a man could be, 
not merely which a man could study and measure by 
walking around it on the outside." 

The biographer, speaking of the Bohlen Lec- 
^tures as indicating a change and an advance; 



48 Intellect and Will. 

as being "the result of his experience in the first 
ten years of his ministry in Boston, which gives 
to his preaching in Boston a different tone from 
the Philadelphia life," says: ''There are hints 
in this book that another change was awaiting 
him, when he would pass into an ampler and 
diviner sphere. At times he seems to be tempted 
to give the primacy to the will." 

This final change seems to connect itself with 
the year 1882, which he spent in Europe, chiefly 
for the purposes of study. There, to his instruc- 
tion and delight, he came in contact with the 
philosophy of Lotze. Of the effect produced 
upon him by this contact, it is said: 

"The influence of Lotze was to raise the question wheth- 
er the intellectual formula at any moment was adequate 
for the full and final expression of the human soul, of hu- 
man faith and belief. That one did not come to the truth 
solely by the intellectual process, had always been one of 
the ruling ideas of Phillips Brooks. But in the first stages 
of his developement he had assigned the lead to the reason. 
But as he passed through the struggles of the seventies, 
he found more and more that men must believe through 
the cognitive power of the feeling — those deeper instincts 
of the human constitution which do not originate so much 
in the mind as in the heart. With this growing tendency 
in himself he found Lotze in harmony, as also in another 
direction which he was forecasting, that the reason had 
been given a predominance in modern philosophy which 
obscures or subordinates the mighty function of the 
human will." 

And, again, further on in the biography, the 
author, comparing the earlier and the later 



Intellect and Will. 49 

preaching of Phillips Brooks, speaks of "a 
change which it was not easy to define," and 
connects the change with the increasing im- 
portance which he came to attach to the will, 
as distinguished from the intellect. He says: 

"We have seen from his correspondence how Phillips 
Brooks, when in Germany, had been reading Lotze, with 
a feeling of grateful surprise. What 'Ecce Homo' had 
been to him in earlier j^ears, Lotze was in his later years. 
To both he came prepared by his own previous work. 
In his philosophy of life and religion he had been antici- 
pating what Lotze would teach him. He had felt deep 
dissatisfaction with the abstract theories of prevailing 
systems of philosophy, a certain scorn for the one-sided 
intellectualism of his age, whether in philosophy or the- 
ology. The speculative reason had seemed to him inad- 
equate for the expression of the rich fulness of the contents 
of the soul, or for the deductions from human history. 
In these convictions his study of Lotze confirmed him, 
giving him the strength and confidence which a man stand- 
ing alone must eagerly welcome. There was no break in 
his experience, only the continuation in bolder fashion 
of the principles which had hitherto given him freedom 
and power of utterance." 

From this time there seems to have been a 
different and deeper tone in the preaching of 
Phillips Brooks; a change, but only in the way 
of development and progress; only the continua- 
tion and completion, as it were, of that which 
had been characteristic of his preaching from the 
beginning. It was as if he had at last arrived at 
clear and full vision of the great principle which, 
though more or less hidden, had from the first 



50 Intellect and Will. 

been dominating all his thinking and all his 
preaching. Of his later preaching it is said: 

"But there is another tendency to be noted in his later 
representative utterances. He inclines to identify the 
total man in his unity with the will. He places the stress 
upon the will, as if in itself it carried the harmony of all 
the powers. He had always magnified obedience as the 
highest virtue, but he speaks of it at last as though the 
will were the essence of life whether in God or man. It 
begins to be more evident that he had himself been going 
through an inward revolution, and must therefore be 
ranked with those who have uttered their protest in 
history against the tendency to give too exalted promi- 
nence to the intellect." 

It is said of him that, in a sermon on the 
''Knowledge of God/' preached in 1884, he 
''went so far as almost to identify knowledge 
with will, till all life seems to resolve itself into 
will." And as regards this characteristic of his 
later preaching, his biographer remarks: "This 
importance attached to the will, as if it held the 
intellect in solution, explains some characteris- 
tics of Phillips Brooks otherwise unintelligible 
to an age which gave the supremacy to the in- 
tellect." This expression concerning the will, 
^'as if it held the intellect in solution," seems to 
us very striking and deeply significant, and to 
approach very near to the root of the matter, as 
regards this vital question of the relation be- 
tween intellect and will. It is understood, of 
course, that the word "will" is used, in this 



Intellect and Will. 51 

connection, not in a small and narrow, but in 
a very large and comprehensive sense. Phillips 
Brooks himself warns against an undue restric- 
tion of the signification of the M'ord, saying: 
"We must not understand vrill too narrowly. 
It includes the whole creative force in which 
there is an element of affection and desire." 

We make one more quotation, for the purpose 
of showing, what might otherwise abundantly 
be shown, that this change rvsis not accom- 
panied by any unjust disparagement of, or any 
indifference towards, the intellect and the things 
pertaining to the intellect. Dwelling upon the 
change perceptible in Phillips Brooks after the 
critical year to which we have referred, his 
biographer says: 

"He had by no means grown indifferent to the intel- 
lectual problems in theological reconstruction. He fol- 
lowed them with interest, and took his part in their dis- 
cussion. He retained his allegiance to the old formulas 
of belief, and yet with a difference, for at last he had learn- 
ed that they had not the quality of finality. The full 
truth was something larger always than the intellect 
could adequately formulate." 

Such were the principal successive stages in 
that great process of change and evolution 
which seems to us to have been the most signifi.- 
cant and characteristic thing in the life of Phillips 
Brooks, and also one of the chief things explana- 
tory of his great influence and power as a 
preacher. 



VI. 

THE INCLUSIVENESS OF THE TRUTH. 

The writer sometimes finds a jewel — an in- 
tellectual jewel — which he thereupon instantly 
and eagerly seizes and thrusts into the treasury 
of his memory. The jewel he discovers is mostly 
a sentence or a phrase, or it may be even a single 
word; it is like a nugget of gold, heavy with 
condensed meaning, or like a sparkling diamond, 
sending forth its light in many directions. It 
is a consolation to the student that he need not 
go to California or Montana in order to find 
nuggets of gold, nor travel to the diamond-fields 
of South Africa in order to obtain precious 
stones. 

The precious stone, in this instance, is a saying 
of the philosopher Leibnitz. We do not claim 
to have discovered it for ourselves, for we have 
been no student of the writings of Leibnitz — 
we have not worked in that mine. We humbly 
admit that we have received it at second-hand; 
it has just been brought to our attention through 
an address on the ''Similarities and Contrasts 
of Christianity and Buddhism," by Professor 
George H. Palmer, of Harvard University. The 

52 



The Inclusiveness of the Truth. 53 

Outlook, publishing this address in its issue of 
June 19th, refers to it editorily as "a, noble 
example of what all theological discussion 
should be; namely, never controversial, but 
always truth-seeking; never an attack on sup- 
posed falsehood, but always an exposition of 
the truth." This high praise, it seems to us, 
is fully deserved. The same editorial points to 
the quotation from Leibnitz as the keynote to 
this "remarkable address." The address, it 
should be mentioned, was delivered before the 
Outlook Club, and formed part of a friendly 
discussion of the relations between Christianity 
and Buddhism, with the well-known Oriental 
scholar, Dharmapala. 

The quotation in question occurs, near the 
beginning of the address, in the following pass- 
age. Discussing and allowing the claims of 
Buddhism and Mohammedanism to universality. 
Professor Palmer says: 

"I say, therefore, that, so far as I am competent to 
contrast these faiths with Christianity, I can hardly give 
them the title of universal in the same sense as I give it 
to Christianity; for, as it seems to me, each of these faiths 
takes into account but a single section of a man's being. 
They show us the nobility of that side of ourselves, but 
they leave out other sides. Therefore I think both of 
these may be called universal simply in the sense that 
they do not confine themselves to a single nation. They 
are not universal in the sense of appealing to man as man. 
Of course, if I found this to be the case with Buddhism, 



54 The Inclusiveness of the Truth. 

I should confess myself a Buddhist; for, as I understand 
it, the test of religious truth is inclusiveness. That was 
a noble saying of Leibnitz: 'Every denial is false; every 
affirmation true,' And something of this sort we must 
assert in the matter of religion. We must declare all 
exclusions evil." 

We quote the passage simply in order to give, 
in its proper setting, the quotation from Leib- 
nitz, which is all that we are here concerned 
with. It bears that paradoxical form in which 
great truths often love to clothe themselves. 
It is a statement which might easily and plaus- 
ibly be pronounced false. Taken according to 
the letter, it is indeed false; but, taken accord- 
ing to the spirit, it enshrines and expresses a 
great, incontrovertible, far-reaching truth. 

The truth is, in its very nature, affirmative 
and inclusive. Denying and excluding are not, 
properly speaking, characteristics of it; these 
are, rather, the characteristics of error. It is 
with deep insight that Goethe puts into the 
mouth of Mephistopheles the words, "Ich bin 
der Geist, der stets verneint." Not every one who 
denies, indeed, is of the spirit of Mephistopheles, 
but the Mephistopheles spirit is essentially the 
spirit of denial. Denial is almost always evil; 
at best it is only a secondary and a very inferior 
sort of good. The wise man will not often make 
an unqualified denial ; he will not be found in the 
number of those who are forever 'Menying the 



The Inclusive7iess of the Truth. 55 

assertion" and '' controverting the position." 
''Now I," writes one of the most thoughtful and 
acute of English critics, ''who believe all errors 
to arise in some narrow, partial, or angular view 
of truth, am seldom disposed to meet any sincere 
affirmation by a blank, unmodified denial." As 
a rule, the man who sees narrowly and super- 
ficially will be always denying ; the man of broad 
and deep vision will be always affirming. The 
one will be found building v/alls to exclude, the 
other, throwing open gates to let in. It is because 
of the nature of the truth itself. For it is posi- 
tive and not negative; and it is large, compre- 
hensive, catholic, universal. The truth loves to 
affirm ; it has a passion for including. Whatever 
denial may be necessary, it simply allows to 
follow of itself, as a corollary to its affirmation. 
It is vexed by no trembling anxiety lest its claims 
should be disallowed or its cause overthrown. 
It is serene and tranquil; fears no foes; is best 
defended when most defenseless; sits enthroned; 
'^ securus judicat orhis terrarum." 

Its inclusiveness is one of the chief glories of 
Christianity. Whatsoever of truth there may 
be in Buddhism or Mohammedanism, or any 
other faith claiming or seeming to be universal, 
is comprehended in the one religion which is 
really such. He who is the Truth embraces all 
in Himself. The sun, the source of all the light 
there is, knows well the congenial and friendly 



56 The Inclusiveness of the Truth. 

relation sustained to it by all inferior lights; it 
does not consider even the most faintly flicker- 
ing candle-light alien to its own splendor. The 
Gospel of Jesus Christ is affirmative of all truth 
and inclusive of all goodness. This has not 
always been clearly perceived by those who have 
stood forth as defenders of the faith and main- 
tainers of the truth. These have often acted in 
a spirit different from that of Leibnitz's maxim; 
they have seemed to delight in denial and ex- 
clusion. It is, in large measure, the result of the 
human fondness for the construction of systems. 
The difficulty lies not in the tendency to form 
systems, which is inevitable, but in the dog- 
matism which insists upon the finality of these, 
instead of regarding them as in their very nature 
more or less temporary, provisional and tenta- 
tive. For the sake of his system, the maker of 
it is sometimes obliged to reject and exclude no 
small amount of truth. He prematurely draws 
his circle, with the result that, after it is drawn, 
much is found left out which ought to have 
been included. Naturally and necessarily so — 
the Truth is so large and the circle is so small. 
''The most glorious and widely operative of all 
truths," says the author of ''Enigmas of the 
Spiritual Life," "are often rejected by philoso- 
phers for the sake of consistency." And, again, 
the same writer says: "It seems as if the Infinite 
abhorred systems, as if it even loved to lurk in 



The Inclusiveness of the Truth. 57 

the mazes of apparent inconsistencies, as if God 
had ^chosen the foolish things of the world to 
confound the wise.'" The worship of system, 
the passion for consistency, the bondage to logic, 
have often narrowed and impoverished the minds 
and hearts of men. Systems are good, useful, 
necessary; but we very much need to know how 
inadequate our small and exclusive systems are 
for the statement of the vast, comprehensive and 
inclusive Truth. 

Let all truth be included. There is truth that 
is simply other. Make room for the other truth; 
it, too, whatsoever it may be, belongs to the one 
great household. This is an evil, that men are 
sometimes led to disparage, if not to deny and 
exclude, truth other than that to the pursuit 
of which they themselves are devoted. The 
mathematician is in danger of making light of all 
truth that is incapable of mathematical demon- 
stration, and, unfortunately for him, the very 
highest truths are subject to this very incapacity. 
The man of natural science is prone to regard 
with suspicion all truths not arrived at by what 
he, in his narrowness, calls scientific methods. 
The theologian has sometimes been afflicted by 
a perfectly needless fear of the discoveries of 
science, seeming to threaten his view of the 
Bible or his theological system. As if any 
actually discovered truth could be at variance 
with any other truth. All truth is sacred, and 



58 The Inclusiveness of the Truth. 

all truths are consistent with one another. And 
the genuine love of the truth is characterized 
by a largeness and inclusiveness born of the 
largeness and inclusiveness of the truth itself. 
It has a catholic regard for all kinds of truth, 
whether natural and physical, or mathematical, 
or moral and spiritual, giving to each its proper 
place and assigning to each its due degree of 
importance. It remembers our Saviour's words: 
*'In My Father's house are many mansions." 

There is truth that is not only other, but 
opposite. Let this also, nay, let this especially 
be included. Make room for the truth that is 
opposite, and seemingly inconsistent with some- 
thing already held, though undoubtedly con- 
sistent with that, with a consistency that lies 
too deep for our shallow logic to discover. This 
is the nature and glory of the truth, that it is 
large enough to afford entertainment to a great 
number of apparent inconsistencies. This is 
the distinction of the Christian religion, in this 
respect, that, while "seemingly the home of 
paradoxes," it is '^really the reconciler of con- 
tending and partial truths." One of the greatest 
preachers of the present century, whose special 
characteristic was his depth of spiritual insight, 
in enumerating the principles on which he had 
taught, included this one: ''That truth is made 
up of two opposite propositions, and not found 
in a via media between the two." Of these two 



The Inclusiveness of the Truth. 59 

opposites, always found in the highest regions of 
truth, let neither loe rejected; let both be in- 
cluded. 

There is truth that is imperfectly and inade- 
quately expressed; let it not be excluded because 
of its imperfect form. It is T\^ell to remember 
the "soul of goodness in things evil/' and to 
recognize truth even when it stumbles into false- 
hood in the attempt at expression. We cannot 
but feel that at one point in the beautiful and 
noble address which has given rise to this com- 
munication, Professor Palmer seems to fall short, 
in this respect, of the spirit of the saying which 
he quotes from Leibnitz. He is contrasting the 
disparagement and denial of personality by 
Buddhism with Christianity's affirmation of the 
supreme worth of it, and takes occasion to illus- 
trate his meaning by quoting from a popular 
hymn : 

"Our popular hymn says: 

'O to be nothing, nothing! 
Only to lie at His feet, 
A broken and empty vessel, 
For the Master's service meet!' 
"What blasphemy! An empty vessel suited to the 
service of the Master? No, never! The most perfect 
vessel, the fullest vessel, this shall be ours. And that is 
the Christian doctrine. It is not to starve and abolish 
ourselves; it is to fill ourselves full and render ourselves 
potent individuals, that we maj^ be forever God's efficient 
servants." 



60 The Inclusiveness of the Truth. 

We entirely agree with Prof. Palmer in what 
he affirms in opposition to the sentiment of this 
hymn as apprehended by him. Without doubt 
there is something in it jarring to sound Chris- 
tian feeUng. But, would it not be better, would 
it not be more in accordance with the motto 
adopted from Leibnitz, to perceive and recognize 
the truth, whatever it may be, imperfectly ex- 
pressed by these lines, and affirm that also? 
And, after all, is it not a truth which the hymn 
is trying to utter? To be nothing before God, 
is not that, in one sense, what Christianity teaches 
us we must become? To be empty, is not that, 
according to the Gospel, the condition of being 
filled? Is there not a good sense in which we 
may desire to be as empty and broken vessels? 
Is there not in this hymn (awkwardly expressed, 
we are willing to admit) something akin to what 
our Saviour says of poverty in spirit, of hunger- 
ing and thirsting after righteousness, of losing 
one's life in order to find it? Is not the senti- 
ment very much like that of St. Paul, when he 
says: ''When I am weak, then am I strong,*' 
and when he exclaims, "Most gladly, therefore, 
will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the 
power of Christ may rest upon me?'* 

We are not arguing in behalf of this hymn, 
which we have never sung, and know only by 
report. We are simply using it as an instance 
and illustration, to show that, along with the 



The Inclusiveness of the Truth. 61 

truth that is other, and the truth that is oppo- 
site, that truth is also to be included which has 
the misfortune to be awkwardly or erroneously 
expressed. This would seem to be in accordance 
with the spirit of Christ, who condemned only 
sin, who excluded none but those who excluded 
themselves, who was alv^^ays mindful of the 
"other sheep," declaring that He must bring 
and include "them also." 



VII. 
THE OTHER SIDE. 

The partisan will care for his own side; the 
seeker after truth, supposing him to have a ''side, '^ 
will be almost equally interested in that which 
is opposite his own. He will care for the other 
side, also ; for various reasons, chief among which 
will be his consciousness of the largeness and 
inclusiveness of the truth, and the probability 
that a portion of it lies in the opposite direction. 
The truth is characterized, in a remarkable manner, 
by a certain duplicity, using this word, not in 
its secondary and derived, but in its primary and 
original sense. It is double, in the natural and 
good sense of the word. * ' All things are double one 
against another;" and this duplicity is character- 
istic especially of the great kingdom of the truth. 
We do not pretend to be acquainted with the 
philosophy of Hegel, but we have seen him 
quoted as holding ''that every truth is the unifi- 
cation of the contrary elements of two partial 
aspects of the idea; that every truth holds its 
contradiction, and that it is from antagonism in 
the opposing forces that the development into 
final unity must come ; that the vitality of the 

62 



The Other Side. 63 

truth depends upon this antogonism that is nec- 
essary for its perfect evolution." So strange a 
thing is the truth; so large and comprehensive; 
so characterized by duplicity or doubleness; so 
much the home of paradoxes; such room does it 
make for the other side. 

Something of this largeness and comprehen- 
siveness there will be in every one who is sincerely 
a lover of the truth and a seeker after it. He 
will not be swift to fix upon a single side, and 
obstinately maintain that there is no other. He 
will have a fear of narrowing that which God 
made *Wery broad." He will not be among the 
pretenders to universal and absolute knowledge, 
but will lay stress upon the fact that all our 
knowledge is '4n part," and that all our systems 
are in a certain sense tentative and provisional. 
He will be afraid, not indeed of metaphysics and 
the making of systems, which are good, but of 
the spirit of dogmatism, which is bad. There 
are those who say, ''This or that is true," and 
those who say, ''This and that is true:" the gen- 
uine seeker after truth will be more likely to be 
found amoung the latter; he will always be con- 
sidering the other side. One cannot help feeling 
that there is deep truth in Emerson's vrords, 
when, having spoken in his usual gracious manner 
of the system-makers, he nevertheless adds: 
"'Tis the gnat grasping the world. We have not 
got on far enough for this. We have just begun, 



64 The Other Side. 

and are always just beginning to know." The 
same writer elsewhere says in regard to this 
same matter: *'If one can say so without arro- 
gance, I might suggest that he who contents him- 
self with dotting only a fragmentary curve, 
recording only what facts he has observed, with- 
out attempting to arrange them within one out- 
line, follows a system, also, a system as grand as 
any other, though he does not interfere with ts 
vast curves by prematurely forcing them into a 
circle or ellipse, but only draws that arc which 
he clearly sees, and waits for new opportunity, 
assured that these observed arcs consist with each 
other." It is Emerson, again, who says of 
Plato, what might well indeed have been said of 
himself: ''The acutest German, the lovingest 
disciple, could never tell what Platonism was; 
indeed, admirable texts can be quoted on both 
sides of every great question from him." 

We mention these things, especially this judg- 
ment in regard to Plato, for the purpose of call- 
ing attention to the fact that the largeness and 
comprehensiveness of the truth, taking the form 
of duplicity in the natural and good sense of the 
of the word, is apt to be found in every great 
representative and teacher of it. This peculiar- 
ity, being misapprehended, may be complained 
of as being unsatisfactory, as giving an elusive 
and tantalizing character to a man's teaching. 
It is easier to deal with one side than with two 



The Other Side. ^ 65 

sides; one-sidedness is far more congenial to our 
littleness and narrowness. We like to have 
things clearly defined, definitely fixed, finally 
settled; we love the dogmatic and absolute tone; 
we would rather know in whole than ''in part." 
It is provoking to follow a teacher whose teaching 
often seems to border on indefiniteness and inde- 
cision, and leaves many questions open. But, 
on the other hand, it may be asked whether this 
complaint ought not to be made against the 
truth itself, rather than against the representa- 
tive and teacher of it. Is one-sidedness neces- 
sarily good, or two-sidedness necessarily evil; is 
not the latter, properly understood, one of the 
essential elements in all just representation? 
And the provoking and tantalizing character 
of the teaching of a teacher who refuses to com- 
municate finalities, but leaves many questions 
undecided, and has habitual regard for the other 
side, — may there not be something wholesome and 
beneficent in this? To provoke, to tantalize, 
to stimulate and inspire for the search after 
truth, — ^is not this one of the chief characteristics 
of a great teacher? Does not the greatness of 
a great teacher chiefly consist, not so much in 
the definite ''views" he communicates or the 
fixed "system" he lays down, as in the circum- 
stance of his being an awakening, stimulating 
and inspiring force to those who follow him? 

Regard for the other side is produced by the 
consciousness of the largeness of the truth; it 



66 The Other Side. 

is the result, also, of considerations of prudence 
and policy. It is a practical as well as a theo- 
retical matter, a thing needed by the advocate, 
the rhetorician, the statesman, no less than by 
the philosopher. While every question has two 
sides, yet, when it comes to practice and action, 
it becomes wise and necessary to choose one side 
as distinguished from the other, and endeavor 
to secure acceptance and adoption for one view 
instead of its opposite. In all argument by 
which men seek to convince their fellow-men 
and persuade them to the adoption of a certain 
course of action, it is the part of wisdom and 
the indication of strength to give the fullest and 
fairest possible statement and consideration of 
all the reasons capable of being adduced on the 
other side. And to do this is one of the charac- 
teristic peculiarities of the servant of the truth 
as distinguished from the partisan and special 
pleader; of the statesman as distinguished from 
the politician; of him who is really the holder of 
the truth for which he argues as distinguished 
from him who is simply the ''advocate "of it, 
and nothing more. The partisan, thinking only 
of his own view, and having in mind the victory 
of his own side, will seek to conceal or make 
light of the things that make for his adversary's 
cause; but the servant of the truth, instinctively 
feeling that weakness and defeat lie along that 
line, and strong with the strength of his own 
belief and conviction, will be scarcely less careful 



The Other Side. 67 

of his adversary's side than of his own. Hence 
it is a rule in all sound rhetoric, to make the 
clearest, fullest and fairest possible statement of 
all the reasons that may be brought against the 
view in behalf of which one is arguing. It is 
this, largely, that wins attention and tends to 
produce conviction. For it at once sweeps away 
the suspicion that the speaker holds his belief 
through ignorance or want of attention or con- 
sideration, and shows that he has arrived at it 
only after having weighed and found wanting 
all that could be said against it. 

A distinguished Queen's Counsel was accus- 
tomed to say that he won his cases by admissions. 
Much of his power lay in the wisdom and skill 
with which he made concessions. It is said to 
have been characteristic of John Stuart Mill 
that, at the outset of every argument, he aimed 
to make, and often succeeded in making, a 
clearer and more forcible statement of his adver- 
sary's case than the adversary v/as able to make 
himself. What is more impressive than such a 
manifestation of the spirit of fairness and justice? 
What course could be better adapted to win a 
hearing, to remove prejudice, to overcome oppo- 
sition, to enable one to carry one's point? Every 
lover and seeker of the truth, and every one who 
aims by means of legitimate argument, to win 
over, 'Hhose that oppose themselves," will find 
it necessary to give large attention and considera- 
tion to the other side.f 



VIII. 
MATHEMATICAL AND MORAL CERTAINTY 

"What a pity/' says George Eliot in one of 
her earlier letters, "that, while mathematics are 
indubitable, and no one doubts the properties 
of a triangle or a circle, doctrines infinitely import- 
ant to man are buried in a charnel heap of bones 
over which nothing is heard but the barks and 
growls of contention ! ' ' 

The complaint is an old one, and a favorite 
one with those whose chief passion is for knowing; 
who demand that knowledge shall be exact, 
perfect, "indubitable;" who deem it necessary, 
or at least desirable, that the truth of the "doc- 
trines infinitely important to man" should be 
demonstrated and known and held with the 
same unquestionable certainty as the truths of 
mathematical science. Against this complaint 
the counter-complaint might justly be urged that 
it exercises no discrimination, but commits the 
fallacy of transferring to one species of truth 
requirements which are applicable only to 
another. Certainty, of such kind and in such 
degree as is possible and necessary, will not be 
wanting to the holding of any kind of truth. 

68 



Mathematical and Moral Certainty. 69 

But everything after its kind; for each species 
of truth, that sort of certainty, and no other, of 
which it is naturally and constitutionally capable. 
For mathematical truth, mathematical certainty; 
for moral truth, moral certainty. And moral 
certainty, though different from that which is 
mathematical, is, nevertheless, genuine certainty 
still. 

It is not our purpose at present, however, to 
dwell further upon this point, important as it is, 
but rather to point out the fact that the true 
state of the case is exactly the reverse of that 
which is implied in the sentence we have quoted. 
As regards the ''pity" there spoken of, it is just 
the other way. Instead of being a pity that 
moral and spiritual truth is not capable of being 
rendered ''indubitable" by mathematical demon- 
stration, it w^ould be a pity if it should be. Such 
demonstration is, as we have said, from the nature 
of the case impossible. What we are saying now 
is that if it were possible it would not be desirable. 
That is to say, if it were possible to prove the 
truth of the "infinitely important" doctrines in 
question with the same sort of certainty and 
finality with which it is proved that the angles 
of a triangle are equal to two right angles, we 
should not be the gainers; we should, in fact, be 
impoverished instead of enriched thereby. For 
the accomplishment of this one object, however 
desirable it may be considered, would have ren- 



70 Mathematical and Moral Certainty. 

dered impossible the accomplishment of other 
objects vastly more important. If, indeed, it 
were the object of man's existence simply to 
know, and the satisfaction of his curiosity were 
the one chiefly desirable thing, then the prompt, 
final and indubitable settlement of all questions 
by means of mathematical demonstration would 
be the supremely important thing which George 
Eliot conceives it to be. It needs no argument, 
however, to show that the attainment of clear, 
exact and certain knowledge is not the chief end 
of man's existence on earth, and that the satis- 
faction of all his curiosity would be a compara- 
tively poor, insignificant and ineffective thing. 
The end of life is, as we are frequently reminded, 
not a thought, but an action. It has become a 
sort of proverb that "conduct is three-fourths 
of life." There are things of higher rank and 
deeper meaning than knowledge; lying at the 
root of it, giving rise to it, determining and con- 
trolling it; in comparison with which knowledge 
may justly be disparaged. ''Knowledge puffeth 
up, but love buildeth up." We are here, not for 
the satisfaction of curiosity, but for the develop- 
ment of character. We are in this life as pupils 
are in a school, for the purpose of being educated, 
disciplined, trained. And it would be easy to 
show that the fulfilment of this purpose is directly 
and powerfully aided by the very lack of mathe- 
matical indubitability, by the very circumstance 



Mathematical and Moral Certainty. 71 

that ail our knowledge as regards the great 
questions pertaining to human welfare, conduct 
and destiny, is necessarily of a partial and imper- 
fect character. 

It is no disparagement of the truth to say that 
there is something more desirable than the pos- 
session of it; that is to say, considered simply as 
knowledge capable of being acquired and held 
by the human understanding. In a certain sense, 
indeed, there is nothing greater than the truth; 
we may even say with Plutarch, that it is "the 
greatest blessing God can give or man receive." 
But, taking the word in the sense that we have 
just indicated, the passion for the truth is evi- 
dently something of greater importance and value 
than the possession of it. To be, as our Saviour 
said, ''of the truth," is more than to have the 
truth; for being is always more than having. 
It is one thing to possess the truth (supposing 
that to be possible), considered merely as so 
much knowledge; it is another thing to possess 
the passionate desire for the truth, or, rather, 
that kinship and sympathy with the truth out 
of which the passionate desire for it grows. 
This is the basis of the truth which is generally 
felt to be expressed in Lessing's famous saying, 
however it may be criticized, that, if God should 
hold in His right hand eternal truth, and in His 
left the one indestructible impulse and quest 
after the truth, and should say to him, ''Choose" 



72 Mathematical and Moral Certainty. 

he would humbly incline to His left hand, and 
say, ''Give me that, Father. Eternal Truth 
is for Thee alone!" In this saying of Lessing's 
there would at least seem to be more of insight 
and wisdom than in the often-quoted saying of 
Huxley's, similar in form, but contradictory in 
substance: ''I protest that if some great Power 
would agree to make me always think what is 
true and do what is right, on condition of being 
turned into a sort of clock and wound up every 
morning before I got out of bed, I should instant- 
ly close with the offer." The greater wisdom of 
Lssing's utterance is found in the fact that he 
perceived, what Huxley failed to perceive, the 
immense significance, as regards the attainment 
of the knowledge of the truth, of the passionate 
desire for it. Where this passion exists it is 
certain to lead eventually to the finding of the 
truth; on the principle that ''he that seeketh, 
findeth, and to him that knocketh it shall be 
opened;" on the principle that he that is "of 
the truth," "heareth the voice" of Him who is 
"the truth." But, on the other hand, without 
this passionate desire, the knowledge of the 
truth is an utterly impossible thing. The love 
of the truth, the desire for it — above all, the do- 
ing of it so far as known — is an absolutely essen- 
tial part of the knowing and holding of it. Moral 
and spiritual truth is of such a nature as to be 
incapable of being known and held by the under- 



Mathematical and Moral Certainty. 73 

standing alone, independently of the action of 
the affections and the will. 

Such is the supreme importance of the passion 
for the truth. And, doubtless, the principal 
reason why moral and spiritual truth is incapable 
of the certainty and finality of mathematical 
demonstration, is, that such demonstration, so 
far from producing or fostering this passionate 
desire, has nothing to do with passion at all. 
In a certain sense it is uncertainty, rather than 
certainty, that tends to breed the passion for 
the truth, and is the secret source of all the pro- 
gress we make toward the knovvdedge of it. It 
is because we know only "in part," that w^eare 
forever led onward in the quest after higher and 
fuller knowledge. At all events,that passionate 
desire is chiefly nurtured, not by the mathematic- 
al certainty of one who would see the truth of the 
''infinitely important doctrines" demonstrated 
after the manner of a problem in geometry, but 
by the moral certainty of him who believes and 
trusts, and, acting on belief and trust, having 
always sufficient warrant for so doing, presses 
ardently onward toward the object of his love. 
The substitution of mathematical for moral cer- 
tainty would be an infinite loss. It would kill 
desire; it would put an end to progress; it would 
cause the largest and most opulent portions of 
our being to perish from atrophy. Destroying 
love, it would, in fact, at the same time destroy 



74 Mathematical and Moral Certainty. 

knowledge, which has its root and origin in love. 
No more effectual means could be found of 
defeating the very purposes for which moral and 
spiritual truth is to be sought and found by us, 
than the establishment of it with mathematical 
indubit ability, by means of mathematical demon- 
stration. The immediate and final answer of all 
questions; the being made by "some great 
Power," always to think what is true; the being 
forced to assent to the truth of the great doctrines 
of religion, with the compulsory acceptance with 
which we accept the conclusion of a demon- 
stration in mathematics — this, if it were possible, 
would render impossible the very end for which 
moral and spiritual truth exists as an object of 
our search. 

In all processes of education there is something 
more important than knowledge; it is the pas- 
sion for learning. The possession of knowledge 
is one thing, and may be a very poor and ineffec- 
tive thing ; but the passion for learning is always 
something high and noble, influential and pro- 
ductive of results. He would be a poor teacher 
who should conceive that his duty to his pupils 
consisted in answering all questions for them, 
and solving all problems. The wise teacher 
places in the hands of his pupil the means of 
finding the answer to the question and the solu- 
tion of the problem, and compels him to find 
them for himself. It is by so doing that he is 



Mathematical and Moral Certainty. 75 

educated. The value of the answer for him lies, 
not in the possession of it, but in the process by 
which he finds it. The problem, unsolved by 
him, is, in the proper sense of the word, not 
solved at all. In matters of education, it can 
hardly be said, strictly speaking, that there is 
such a thing as one person's solving a problem 
for another ; he must solve it for himself ; therein, 
chiefly, is the value of the solution found. 
Hence the wise teacher is far from being addicted 
to the indiscriminate communication of informa- 
tion; it will probably be as characteristic of him 
to withhold as to impart. Dean Stanley, in his 
''Life of Dr. Thomas Arnold," says of the 
teaching of his master: ''His whole method was 
founded on the principle of awakening the intel- 
lect of every individual boy. Hence it v/as his 
practice to teach by questioning. As a general 
rule, he never gave information, except as a kind 
of reward for an answer, and often withheld it 
altogether or checked himself in the act of utter- 
ing it, from a sense that those whom he was 
addressing had not sufficient interest or sympathy 
to entitle them to receive it." Elsewhere, the 
same biographer says: "The very scantiness 
with which he occasionally dealt out his knowl- 
edge, when not satisfied that the boys could 
enter into it, w^hilst it often provoked a half- 
angry feeling of disappointment in those who 
eagerly treasured up all that he said, left an im- 



76 Mathematical and Moral Certainty. 

pression that the source from which they drew 
was unexhausted and unfathomed, and to all 
that he did say gave a double value." Such was 
the method of one great teacher who recognized 
the fact that sympathy with the truth, and not 
possession of the knowledge of it, is the thing to be 
first and chiefly desired, and whose aim was, 
not to communicate information, but to awaken 
souls and to develop character. It was the 
method of a still greater Master; of Him of whom 
it is said that He taught the truth to His dis- 
ciples in parables as they were able to bear it; 
and who, almost at the very close of His inter- 
course with them, said: ''I have yet many 
things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them 
now." 

As it is with the education received in scho- 
lastic institutions, so it is likewise with the edu- 
cation received in the greater school of human 
life. It is often and truly said that probability 
is the guide of conduct. In matters pertaining 
to the conduct and course of life, the evidence 
upon the strength of which we act is not of a 
mathematical, but of a probable or moral 
nature. There is no mathematical certainty to 
determine our actions; moral certainty is all 
that is afforded us. The questions which arise 
are mostly of such a nature as to be incapable of 
mathematical demonstration. There are gen- 
erally sound arguments on both sides of them, 



Mathematical and Moral Certainty. 77 

which we are obliged to consider and weigh; 
and, when we act, we act on the strength of a 
preponderance of reasons. It is easy to see why 
this should be so. For it is thus that we get 
our education. It is by the practice of discrimi- 
nation and judgment; by coming to conclusions 
in the face of much that may be said on the 
opposite side; by making ventures; by the exer- 
cise of choice, for which the compulsoriness of a 
mathematical demonstration would leave no 
room whatever — it is by these things that the 
deepest and most characteristic powers of our 
being are called into activity, and receive their 
discipline and training. 

It would seem entirely reasonable and natural 
that God should deal with us on this same 
principle in the great school in which He is 
preparing us for eternity, and as regards the 
questions relating to our eternal welfare and 
destiny. It is not without deep reason that the 
proof of moral and spiritual truth should be 
destitute of mathematical certitude. And it is 
not a pity, but, on the contrary, something to be 
profoundly thankful for, that this is so ; that all 
our knowledge here is of a partial and imperfect 
character; that, as regards doctrines of infinite 
importance, moral certainty is all that we ma}^ 
expect to attain. There are greater things than 
the possession of the truth considered simply 
as so much knowledge; there are things more to 



78 Mathematical and Moral Certainty. 

be desired than the satisfaction of our curiosity. 
It is better to love and to do the truth than to 
know it. God cares more for the development 
of man's character than for the increase of his 
knowledge; and the fulfillment of this object, 
while moral certainty guards and guarantees, 
mathematical certainty would destroy. 

Perhaps, in justice to the distinguished 
author whose words we have been using as a 
text, we ought to add that evidence is not 
wanting that George Eliot, in the course of time, 
underwent a change of thought and feeling in 
regard to the matter in question. The quotation 
given by us is, as we have said, from one of her 
earlier letters. There are passages in the later 
letters which seem to show that she had come 
to question the supremacy of the things pertain- 
ing to the intellect; to perceive that struggling 
to attain is in a certain sense a greater thing 
than attaining, and the passion for the truth 
a greater thing than its possession; and to feel 
that there are things more to be desired than 
the mathematical and indubitable proof of the 
truth of infinitely important doctrines. One 
such passage, which we happen just to have 
read, and which is significant because of the 
importance v/hich it seems to attach to the 
feelings and affections as distinguished from 
intellectual opinions and beliefs, we may be per- 
mitted to quote in conclusion : "I have had heart- 



Mathematical and Moral Certainty. 79 

cutting experience that opinions are a poor 
cement between human souls; and the only- 
effect I ardently long to produce by my writings 
is, that those who read them should be better 
able to imagine and to feel the pains and the 
joys of those who differ from themselves in 
everything but the broad fact of being strugg- 
ling, erring, human creatures/' 



IX. 

ARGUMENT AND ANNOUNCEMENT. 

The writer had known, almost from boyhood, 
of Daniel Webster's speech on the ''Dartmouth 
College Case." He was acquainted with the 
occasion of it from an early reading of the biog- 
raphy of the great statesman and orator; had 
often seen it referred to or heard it spoken of ; had 
a general but not a very clear idea of its purpose 
and contents; knew that it was considered to be 
Webster's masterpiece as a constitutional lawyer. 
Yet it happened, somewhat singularly, that the 
speech itself had never been actually read by 
him until the other day, when he took up a 
volume, the object of w^hich, as stated in the 
preface, -was, ''to give, not only Mr. Webster's 
masterpieces, but his masterpiece in each de- 
partment of the great field of intellectual action 
which he occupied in life." The first of the 
speeches contained in the volume was that on 
the Dartmouth College Case; and it w^as given 
as Webster's acknowledged masterpiece in that 
department of the field of intellectual action 
in which he appeared as a constitutional lawj^er. 
The WTiter now understands, as he did not be- 

80 



Argument and Announcement. 81 

fore, the exact nature of the question at issue in 
this celebrated case, and has such a perception 
as would not otherwise have been possible, of 
what it is that constitutes the strength and 
greatness of Webster's oration. One here sees 
the great American lawyer doing some of his 
noblest work in ''the great field of intellectual 
action." The oration is calm and dignified; it 
is characterized by what seems to have been 
characteristic of all the speeches of Webster, the 
naturalness, moderation and reserve of great 
power. One is impressed with that ''evidence 
of ease" which Ruskin declares to be on the very 
front of all the greatest works in existence; one 
feels, not that there is great effort here, but that 
there is great power here. The phrase "intel- 
lectual action," which has just been used, is one 
by which the oration itself may appropriately 
be described; it is an intellectual performance, 
and the feeling with which we witness it is for 
the most part that of a pure intellectual delight. 
One here sees what the intellect is capable of 
when at its best, and when emplojdng its powers 
in the cause of truth and justice. One per- 
ceives and admires the logical nature and char- 
acter of the orator's method; making clear state- 
ments and just discriminations; discerning prin- 
ciples and deducing logical inferences from 
them; citing authorities; constructing and con- 
necting arguments; neither forgetting nor omit- 



82 Argumeyit and Announcement. 

ting anything essential to the case; proceeding 
step by step, one thing following necessarily 
from another, to the inevitable and irresistible 
conclusion. Everyone who reads this oration 
must perceive it to be a noble instance of argu- 
ment. 

It is solely on this account that we make 
mention of it here. We are adducing it as an 
instance and illustration, than which perhaps 
no better could be found, of the nature of 
argument. It serves to give us a high idea of 
the power of logic, to impress us with the dignity 
and nobility of the argumentative process. 
Argument is, within its own proper sphere, one 
of the principal methods by which truth is ascer- 
tained and imparted, one of the chief means by 
which conviction is produced and conclusions 
arrived at. It is the special function of the 
discursive intellect, of the Understanding as dis- 
tinguished from the Reason, to use these terms 
in the sense in which they are used, and dis- 
tinguished one from the other, by Coleridge. The 
adjective ''discursive," applied to the intellect, 
is a very significant and suggestive one. The 
intellect is so called a discnrrendo , from running 
about. The term is not a very dignified one, 
and yet it very aptly describes the nature of the 
intellect, and the nature of its activity, when 
engaged in the process of reasoning. The intel- 
lect is naturally nimble, alert, active; very 



Argument and Announcement. 83 

capable of '^ running about," and, indeed, very 
much needing to ''run about" when engaged in 
its habitual and usual activities. When engaged 
in reasoning and arguing, it passes rapidly hither 
and thither, from right to left, from left to right; 
perceives an objection that will be made and 
goes to meet it ; observes a v\'eak point in its own 
defences, and hastens to strengthen it; goes 
after authorities, bringing them in; seeks and 
finds and gathers together and arranges in order 
ideas, analogies, illustrations, from all quarters. 
It is characteristic of the argumentative process 
that it proceeds step hj step, from point to point. 
First one position is established; from this an- 
other necessarily follows; and from this another, 
and so to the end. It is like the construction of 
a chain, link being fastened to link. It is after 
the order of a syllogism; first the major premise, 
then the minor, then the conclusion. It is like 
a journey, a thing of steps; first one step, then 
another, and so on until the intended conclusion 
is arrived at. Argument is, so to speak, a pedes- 
trian method of ascertaining and communicating 
truth. 

This is not said in disparagement of argument, 
the dignity and nobility of which, within its own 
sphere, we have already sufficiently recognized. 
While freely admitting its greatness and import- 
ance, it is the object of this communication 
simply to point out the fact that, as regards the 



84 Argument and Announcement. 

matter of perceiving and imparting truth, there 
is a method different from and higher than that 
of the process of argument. There are truths, 
and those of the very highest order, which argu- 
ment can do comparatively httle either for or 
against; they are neither perceived, nor im- 
parted, nor rejected, in that manner. It is char- 
acteristic of the greatest truths that they are 
not so much reasoned out as felt out. In regard 
to these, the action of the soul is not discursive, 
but direct; not mediate, but immediate; not 
pedestrian, but winged. Moral and spiritual 
truth is of such a nature that the recognition of 
it is a thing, not so much of argument, as of 
vision. It is, in a certain sense, beyond the 
region of the discursive intellect. In this region, 
and by the methods peculiar to the discursive 
intellect, great and good results may be accom- 
plished in the way of demonstrating truth and 
producing the conviction of it. But beyond this 
region (for it has its boundaries) things are differ- 
ent. The highest truth is not arrived at for 
oneself or demonstrated to others by means 
of argument; it is directly perceived. The 
greatest teachers and uplifters of the human 
race have been, not its reasoners and arguers, 
but its seers, its priests, its prophets, its men of 
vision and inspiration. These arrive at the 
truth, not by the slow process of syllogistic 
reasoning, but by the swift process of spiritual 



Argument and Announcement. 85 

vision. As it is with their ov/n perception of 
truth, so it is with that of those who receive it 
from them. It is communicated to them other- 
wise than by argument and demonstration; 
they receive it by means of perception, recogni- 
tion, vision, intuition — whatever name may be 
given to the soul's mysterious capacity for re- 
ceiving the highest truth. This truth is known, 
so to speak, as a coin is known, by the ring of it. 
Just because it is the highest truth, it makes its 
appeal, not to a part of us, but to the whole of 
us. Its recognition is a function, not of the 
discursive intellect merely, but of the whole 
vital soul; of what the Scriptures call the seeing 
eye, the hearing ear, the understanding heart. 
The world's greatest teachers, those to whom 
men have most readily listened, and by whom 
they have been most stimulated, inspired and 
upHfted, have been, as we have said, its seers. 
They have been the men of vision; they saw, and 
told what they had seen. Their method has 
been, for the most part, not that of Argument, 
but that of Announcement. The greatest teacher 
probably argues comparatively little. He tells 
his vision; he makes known the truth which he 
perceives; you can take it, you can leave it; 
there it is; it is an announcement. We think 
we could show, by giving instances, that this 
comparative disregard of argument has been 
characteristic of some of the most influential 



86 Argument and Announcement. 

teachers of modern times. Take, for example, 
Emerson, "vyIio, whatever opinion may be held 
of his system of thought and belief, will hardly 
be denied to have been one of the most influen- 
tial teachers of modern times, his utterances, 
whether by word of mouth or by pen, acting as 
a powerful intellectual, moral and spiritual 
stimulation and inspiration, upon a very wide 
circle of hearers and readers. It was character- 
istic of Emerson that he almost never argued, 
in the usual sense of the word; he stated, he 
affirmed, he announced. Yie remember to have 
read, in Cabot's biography of Emerson, of the 
curious surprise and disappointment of a certain 
man, v/ho came to a public address or lecture 
given by the Concord philosopher, with the 
intention and expectation of ''holding an argu- 
ment'' with him afterv/ards. He found that 
the philosopher could not ''argue;" he had to be 
informed by others that "Mr. Emerson never 
argues." This inability to argue may seem to 
have been a defect and a weakness; it may well 
be questioned whether it was not rather a part 
of the sage's excellence and strength. "To com- 
plain that Emerson is no systematic reasoner," 
says Mr. John Morley, "is to miss the secret of 
most of those who have given powerful impulse 
to the spiritual ethics of our age. It is not a 
syllogism that turns the heart towards purifica- 
tion of life and aim; it is not the logical en- 



Argument and Announcement. 87 

chained propositions of a sorties, but tiie flash 
of illumination, the indefinable accent, that at- 
tracts masses of men to a new teacher and a 
high doctrine. The teasing ergoteur is alv/ays 
right, but he never leads, nor improves, nor in- 
spires." The great teacher may be deficient in, 
or at least in the practice of, argumentative 
power; but "the flash of illumination, the inde- 
finable accent" — these will certainly be charac- 
teristic of him, and it v/ill be chiefly by means of 
these that he vvdll attract, and lead, and improve, 
and inspire men. 

But Yv^hy should we speak of human teachers? 
Why should we not rather at once cite the 
example of the greatest Teacher the world has 
ever had? It was characteristic of the teachings 
of our Lord Jesus Christ that there was in it 
little or no argument in the accepted sense of 
the word. He seems almost never to conde- 
scend to enter into argument. He affirms, He 
announces. He commands. In His discourses. 
He uses none of those means by v/hich ordinary 
public speakers seek to silence objection and to 
produce conviction. Instead of hastening to 
meet. He seems to ignore and defy the objection 
and opposition raised by the human reason to 
His teaching. He declares that except a man 
be born again he cannot see the kingdom of 
God, and when Nicodemus finds objection and 
wants to know how such a thing is possible, 



88 Argument and Announcement. 

He simply reiterates His assertion. He affirms, 
but enters into no argument to demonstrate the 
truth of His affirmation; He commands, but 
institutes no process of reasoning to justify His 
authority to command. He cites no authorities; 
the principal formula with which He introduces 
His utterances, used by Him more than seventy 
times, is that of ''Verily, verily I say unto you.'' 
"I am the way, the truth and the life." ''I and 
My Father are one." ''He that hath seen Me 
hath seen the Father." "Believe in Me." 
"Keep My commandments." "Come unto Me, 
all ye that labor and are heavy-laden- and I will 
give you rest." Such are His affirmations, His 
commands, His promises. It is not as if He 
despised argument, but as if He felt Himself 
to be in a region far beyond it; as if He had 
perfect confidence in the power of the truth, 
and in the soul's constitutional kinship w^ith it 
and capacity of immediately recognizing it; 
as if He took it for granted that the truth is 
meant for the soul, and the soul for the truth, 
and that, when the truth is announced with 
authority, the soul will know it, as the eye 
knows the light, or the lungs know the air. He 
trusted to the seeing eye and the hearing ear. 
He that was "of the truth" would hear His 
voice. He said, "Everyone that is of the truth 
heareth My voice." 

Such was the peculiarity of our Saviour's 



Argument and Announcement. 89 

teaching, a peculiarity worthy of reverent and 
long-continued consideration. And it was be- 
cause it was His, and of such character, that it 
wielded, and it is because of this that it still 
wields, such vast power over the minds, and 
hearts, and lives of great masses of men. Of 
this teaching it is said: ''And it came to pass, 
when He had ended these sayings, the people 
were astonished at His doctrine; for He taught 
them as one having authority, and not as the 
scribes." Of argument there was in it little 
or nothing, but there was in it something far 
higher and better; it had the "flash of illumina- 
tion/' the ''indefinable accent" of sincerity and 
truth. Its method was the method, not of 
Argument, but of Announcement. 



X. 

THE PRINCIPLE OF AGNOSTICISM. 

Certainly no one can be considered to be more 
justly entitled or better qualified to define 
Agnosticism than Professor Huxley, by whom 
the term itself was invented. We remember to 
have given, several years ago, in a communica- 
tion in this paper, his own interesting account 
of the circumstances under which and the purpose 
for which he invented and introduced this word, 
which has since attained so extensive a circula- 
tion. A definition of the meaning of the word 
is found in the volume on ''Science and Chris- 
tian Tradition." There it is said that Agnosti- 
cism ''is not properly described as a 'negative' 
creed, nor indeed as a creed of any kind, except 
in so far as it expresses absolute faith in the 
validity of a principle which is as much ethical 
as intellectual. This principle may be stated in 
various ways, but they all amount to this: that 
it is wrong for a man to say that he is certain 
of the objective truth of any proposition unless 
he can produce evidence which logically justi- 
fies that certainty." 

Such is Professor Huxley's admirably lucid 
statement of the principle of Agnosticism. It is 

93 



The Principle of Agnosticism. 91 

to him a principle of great and vital importance, 
for it is ethical no less than intellectual in its 
character. It is not merely an intellectual mis- 
take, it is a moral wrong, to believe anything 
true, to regard anything as certain, except upon 
the strength of logical demonstration, and by 
reason of adequate evidence adduced. It is his 
sense of the ethical quality of this principle 
that leads Mr. Huxley to speak, as he elsevv^here 
does, of 'Hhe sin of faith." To believe anything, 
the certainty of which has not been ^'logically 
justified" by the '' evidence" adduced in its be- 
half, is, according to him, contrary to sound 
morality; is, from his point of viev/, a ^'sin.'f 
Probably he would himself agree that it is a sin 
of different character, and of a lesser degree of 
enormity, than some others that might be named. 
However this may be, the principle itself is one 
which may well be questioned and challenged. 
It itself, to begin with, is evidently one of those 
propositions (and that there are such we are far 
from denying) which require to be sustained by 
sufficient evidence and established by logical 
demonstration. The fallacy of it lies in its 
assumption that evidence and logical demon- 
stration are the only means by which a knowl- 
edge of the truth is capable of being arrived at. 
It bases itself upon the supremacy of logic — a 
very questionable position. Important as logic 
is in its place, its field is limited; it by no means 



92 The Principle of Agnosticism. 

comprehends within its domain all the things 
that may be believed and known. It is safe to 
say that ' 'there are more things betwixt heaven 
and earth'' than are dreamed of by logic. There 
are not v/anting thinkers of profound and far- 
reaching insight who use very strong language 
in affirming the inadequateness and insufficiency 
of logic and argument as the means of ascertaining 
truth in general. They discriminate; within 
certain bounds they admit, beyond these bounds 
they deny, the supremacy or sufficiency of logic. 
"Looking at the whole circle of things summoned 
before logic," says one of these, ''I do not find 
more than one single object taken in by logic 
entirely, and that is 'Euclid's Elements.'" In 
mathematics the supremacy of logic is certainly 
to be admitted; but just as certainly there are 
other truths besides those found in the world of 
mathematical science. Not all truth presents 
itself in the form of a proposition to be main- 
tained and demonstrated by argument. The 
world of truth is very large; the methods by 
which it is communicated and received are 
various; and it is only in a relatively small por- 
tion of it that argument has the precedence over 
other means of arriving at certainty. The tem- 
ple of truth, some one has said, has as many 
entrances as it has mansions. Some truths are 
arrived at in one way, and some in another. 
Some are reasoned out, and some are felt out; 



The Principle of Agnosticism. 93 

some come by the head, and some by the heart; 
some are slowly and laboriously proved, and 
some are instantly perceived; some are arrived 
at by argument, and some by action. There are 
truths or doctrines, and those of the highest 
order, to the very idea of which it belongs that 
certainty in regard to them is attained not by 
debating, but by doing; not by logical processes, 
but by action, by experience, by endurance, by 
obedience. The law is that he that doeth the 
will shall know of the doctrine. Without being 
able to discuss here at greater length the ques- 
tion of the supremacy of logic as the sole means 
of arriving at a knowledge of the truth, we 
would simply remark that it is somewhat singu- 
lar that the principle of a system whose avov/ed 
object it is to guard against doubt and guarantee 
certainty, should itself be of a character so 
doubtful and uncertain. 

In this principle of Agnosticism, thus authori- 
tatively stated, we recognize that narrowing, 
curtailing, abridging quality which would seem 
to be one of the principal characteristics of 
Agnosticism itself. It lessens, it contracts, it 
attenuates, it dwarfs. It abridges the scope of 
man's powers; it makes him to consist of intel- 
lect alone; at least, in connection with the work 
of ascertaining the truth, it seem^s to know 
nothing of those moral and spiritual capabili- 
ties and forces which lie above and beyond, or 



94 The Principle of Agnosticism. 

rather underneath; the intellect, in the consti- 
tution of man's vast, complex and mysterious 
nature. It seems to leave out the will and the 
affections, as having nothing whatever to do 
in a process which might well be presumed to 
call for the activity of all man's powers. It has 
no glimpse of the profound truth contained in 
Pascal's saying, that "the heart has its own 
reasons, which the intellect knows nothing of." 
It narrows the realm of truth. It recognizes no 
other kind of truth than that v/hich is capable 
of being expressed in '^propositions" and logic- 
alty justified by ''evidence." It contracts the 
domain of certainty; it admits no other kind of 
certainty than that which is the result of logical 
demonstration. It leaves no room tor moral, 
as distinguished from mathematical, certainty; 
though that is just 'as genuine a species of cer- 
tainty as the other, and one the importance of 
Vv^hich is enhanced in an extraordinary degree 
by the circumstance that it is the only kind of 
certainty we have to base our actions on. If 
"conduct is three-fourths of life," then the kind 
of certainty on which our conduct is grounded 
would seem to be a thing of great significance 
and consequence, and one entitled to a large 
place among the things pertaining to human 
life; 3^et to this kind of certainty the principle 
of Agnosticism seems to assign no place what- 
ever. 



The Principle of Agnosticism. 95 

How contracted, to an Agnostic, the realm of 
<;ertainty is, is evident from these words of 
Mr, Huxley himself: ''No induction, how^ever 
broad its basis, can confer certainty — in the 
strict sense of the word. The experience of the 
whole human race through innumerable years 
has shown that stones unsupported fall to the 
ground, but that does not make it certain that 
any day next week unsupported stones will not 
move the other way. All that it does justify is 
the very strong expectation, which hitherto has 
been invariably verified, that they will do just 
the contrary. Only one absolute certainty is 
possible to man, namely, that at any given 
moment the feeling which he has exists. All 
other so-called certainties are beliefs of greater 
or less intensity." This is taken from a passage 
quoted in Huxley's Biography; there is much to 
the same effect in the volume from which we 
have quoted his definition of Agnosticism. 

One can hardly read these words without feel- 
ing that it is inconsistent on Huxley's part to 
magnify belief, as he here does, by reducing the 
domain of certainty to almost nothing, and yet 
to disparage and disown the religion which 
exalts belief. How can he speak as he does, 
driving certainty almost out of the field and 
leaving almost the whole of it to belief, and yet 
minimize the importance of belief, and speak of 



96 The Principle of Agnosticism. 

"the sin of faith ?'^ How, in view of these 
affirmations and admissions of the great agnostic, 
could John Cotter Morrison characterize as im- 
moral the saying of Christ, '' Blessed are they 
who have not seen, and yet have believed?" 
What would Huxley himself have to say in reply 
to one who should urge that an act of faith 
lies at the beginning of all our reasoning and 
underlies the greater part of our actions? 

Substantially these questions were suggesting 
themselves to us, when, in the volume to which 
v/e are referring, we came upon what seemed to 
be an answer to them. In the essay on '^Ag- 
nosticism," Mr. Huxley says: "It is quite true 
that the ground of every one of our actions, and 
the validity of all our reasonings, rest upon the 
great act of faith, which leads us to take the 
experience of the past as a safe guide in our deal- 
ings with the present and the future. From the 
nature of ratiocination it is obvious that the 
axioms on which it is based cannot be demon- 
strated by ratiocination. It is also a trite ob- 
servation that, in the business of life, we con- 
stantly take the most serious action upon evi- 
dence of an utterly insufficient character. 
But it is surely plain that faith is not necessarily 
entitled to dispense with ratiocination, because 
ratiocination cannot dispense with faith as a 
starting point; and that we are often obliged, 
by the pressure of events, to act on very bad 



The Principle of Agnosticism. 97 

evidence, it does not follow that it is proper to 
act on such evidence when the pressure is 
absent." 

This answer to our questions, while, in speak- 
ing of ''the great act of faith,", it seems to 
admit, does in fact, like Agnosticism in general, 
disparage and minimize, the importance of the 
part played by belief in the thinking, knowing 
and conduct of men. From the admitted facts 
Mr. Huxley does not draw what would seem to be 
the natural and logical inference, but an infer- 
ence which seems perverted and forced. If it 
is true that ''the ground of every one of our 
actions and the validity of all our reasonings" 
rest upon an act of faith, the natural inference 
which an unsophisticated mind would be led 
to draw from this would certainly seem to be, 
"then, how great a thing is faith!" This is not 
the inference drawn by Mr. Huxley; rather, he 
seems to avoid and evade it. He calls attention 
to the fact that faith is indispensable only "as 
a starting point." As if the "starting point" 
were not everjrthing. It is as if one should dis- 
parage and belittle the foundation of a structure, 
saying, "it is only the foundation," and not 
recognizing the fact that, in its relation to the 
superstructure, the foundation is in a certain 
sense all-related and all-determining. He points 
out, as regards action, that faith is a thing to 
which we are sometimes driven by the "pressure 



98 The Principle of Agnosticism. 

of events." As if this, too, were not a sign of 
its greatness, instead of its insignificance; as if 
it were not magnified and exalted by the circum- 
stance that it is all that we have to depend upon 
in times of stress and trial. He claims that faith 
is not in place ''when the pressure is absent;" 
it may be dispensed vnth then. But when, as 
regards action, is the pressure ever absent; and 
how can conduct ever be dissociated from faith 
which is 'Hhe ground of every one of our ac- 
tions?" He concedes that ''we constantly take 
the most serious action upon evidence of an 
utterly insufficient character," that "we are 
often obliged, by the pressure of events, to act 
on very bad evidence." But why is it necessary 
to call the evidence in question "very bad" or 
"utterly insufficient?" If it justifies the 
action, it is good and sufficient. "Good and 
sufficient reason" for a course pursued is by no 
means identical with logical demonstraton. 
From the fact that ratiocination cannot dis- 
pense with faith "as a starting point," he denies 
that it may be inferred that faith may dispense 
with ratiocination when the starting point has 
been left behind. But who would wish to claim 
for faith such a severance from reasoning? 
Faith is reasonable; it can always give a reason; 
it is of the will, but it is of the intellect, too; 
there is no capacity or power of the human soul 
that is foreign to it. It does not dispense with 



The Principle of Agnosticism. 99 

reasoning; as it antedates, so it likewise in- 
cludes it. 

It is curious how Agnosticism, unwillingly, 
and even while endeavoring to minimize its 
place and power, is led to magnify belief. It goes 
far in denying the possibility of any certainty. 
It goes far also in affirming the necessity of belief 
as a principle of action. The principle of Ag- 
nosticism stands or falls with that doctrine of 
the supremacy of logic with which it identifies 
itself. This doctrine is one in the validity of 
which one may well hesitate to place '' absolute 
faith." There is something more in man than 
mere intellect; and there are other things besides 
logic; and the world of truth is larger than the 
world of ^'propositions.'' We are not at the 
mercy of the intellect; we have a higher certainty 
than any that it could give us. The certainty 
we have is the child, not of induction, but of 
obedience. 



XI. 

''PRIOR TO PROOF." 

The text for our last communication was 
furnished by Professor Huxley's definition of 
Agnosticism. This occurs on page 310 of the 
volume entitled ''Science and Christian Tradi- 
tion." On page 312 of the same volume, the 
author, having spoken of " ecclesiasticism, the 
championship of a foregone conclusion," gives, 
in a foot-note, the following, from Dr. J. H. 
Newman, in "Tracts for the Times:" "Let us 
maintain before we have proved. This seeming 
paradox is the secret of happiness." This quo- 
tation reminded us of a similar expression of 
Newman's, used concerning Keble, his friend 
and associate in the days of the Oxford Move- 
ment. It is cited by Principal J. C. Shairp, in 
his essay on Keble, and it is to be found on page 
232 of "Studies in Poetry and Philosophy." 
As there quoted, Newman, having spoken of 
Keble as one "who guided himself and formed 
his judgments, not by processes of reason, by 
inquiry or argument, but, to use the word in a 
broad sense, by authority" (meaning, by author- 
ity in its broad sense, as Principal Shairp ex- 
plains, "conscience, the Bible, the Church, an- 

100 



''Prior to Proofs 101 

tiquity, words of the wise, hereditary lessons, 
ethical truths, historical memories"), goes on 
to say: ''It seemed to me as if he felt ever hap- 
pier when he could speak and act under some 
such primary and external sanction; and could 
use argument mainly as a means of recommend- 
ing or explaining what had claims on his recep- 
tion prior to proof." This phrase, ''prior to 
proof," is a deeply significant one, and expresses 
an idea well worthy of consideration. Its mean- 
ing is identical with that of the quotation given 
in Huxley's foot-note, above referred to, con- 
cerning maintaining before proving. 

Nothing could be more entirely contrary to 
the principles of Agnosticism, as laid down by 
Professor Huxley, than the language which he 
quotes from Dr. Newman. According to the 
one, it is improper and impossible to receive and 
hold anything whatever as true that has not first 
been "logically justified" by sufficient evidence; 
according to the other, there are kinds of tiuth 
which it is possible and proper for us to receive 
and maintain and act upon before they have 
been logically proved. According to the one 
there can be no certainty that is not the result 
of argument and demonstration; according to 
the other, there may be a certainty which goes 
before demonstration, and is followed, rather 
than preceded, by argument. 'Tosterior to 
proof" is the motto of the one; "prior to proof! 



102 ''Prior to Proof r 

might be regarded, if not as the watchword of 
the other, at least as one of its characteristic 
expressions. Newman's language is quoted by- 
Huxley without a word of direct comment; it is 
as if he repeated it in silent contempt and scorn, 
as if he felt the idea to be one which, in order to 
be repudiated, needed only to be expressed in 
words. To him, Newman was simply the apostle 
of ^^ecclesiasticism," the typical representative 
of ''the championship of a foregone conclusion. '^ 
And yet it may well be inquired whether this 
saying is in fact one to be scornfully rejected 
without comment; whether, under this ''seem- 
ing paradox," of maintaining before proving, 
there does not lie hidden away a great and pro- 
found truth. 

Being anxious to know the connection in which 
the saying quoted by Huxley occurs, we took 
the pains to look up his reference to the "Tracts 
for the Times." The saying in question is a 
part of the conclusion of the sixth one of that 
series of eight lectures on "The Scripture Proof 
of the Doctrines of the Church," which make up 
Tract No. 85. From this conclusion v/e quote 
as follows: 

"It surely cannot be meant that we should be undecided 
all our days. We were made for action, and for right 
action — ^for thought, and for right thought. Let us live 
while we live; let us be alive and doing; let us act on what 
we have, since we have not what we wish. Let us believe 



"Prior to Proof.'' 103 

what we do not see and know. Let us forestall know- 
ledge by faith. Let us maintain before we have proved. 
This seeming paradox is the secret of happiness. Why 
should we be unwilling to go by faith? We do all things 
in this world oy faith in the word of others. By faith 
only we know our position in the world, our circumstances, 
our rights and privileges, our fortunes, our parents, our 
brothers and sisters, our age, our mortality. Why should 
religion be an exception? Why should we be unwilling 
to use for heavenly objects what we daily use for earthly? 
Why will we not discern, what it is so much our interest 
to discern, that trust, in the first instance, in what Provi- 
dence sets oefore us in religious matters, is His will and 
our duty; that thus it is He leads us into all truth, not by 
doubting, but by believing; that thus He speaks to us, 
by the instrumentality of what seems accidental; that 
He sanctifies what He sets before us, shallow or weak as it 
may be in itself, for His high purposes; that almost all 
systems have enough of truth, as, when we have no 
choice besides, and cannot discriminate, to make it better 
to take all than to reject all; that He will not deceive us 
if we trust in Him." 

Read thus, in their connection, these words 
do not seem to be absurd; rather, they seem to 
be words of soberness and truth. However con- 
trary the sentiment in question may be to the 
principle of Agnosticism, it certainly is not con- 
trary to, but in accordance with, those principles 
by which for the most part human thought and 
action are governed. To ''maintain before we 
have proved," to accept certain truths, and 
hold them as certain, and act upon them, ''prior 
to proof" — this is not a thing unknown, alien 



104 ''Prior to Proof." 

and abhorrent to our human life; rather, it is a 
necessity from which, by the very constitution 
of our being, it is impossible for us to escape. 
It is a principle upon which, as Newman says, 
we are constantly acting in regard to earthly 
matters. The whole fabric of our ratiocination 
rests, as we have seen Professor Huxley himself 
acknowledging (though with a strange unwilling- 
ness to accept what seems to be the natural 
inference from the fact) upon certain truths 
accepted ''prior to proof." The great majority 
of our actions are performed upon the same 
principle. In our conduct we are guided by 
probability, by a preponderance of reasons, by 
moral as distinguished from mathematical cer- 
tainty. If, as regards any proposed course of 
action, we were obliged to wait, before acting, 
for a logical and irrefragable demonstration of 
the correctness of it, we should almost never act. 
As things are accepted, so likewise they are done, 
''prior to proof." Intellectual certainty is a 
thing to end, rather than to begin with. We act 
on belief and trust ; we are rewarded by certainty. 
The thing is done by a motive power other than 
that of logical demonstration; the argument and 
proof by which the doing of it is intellectually 
justified come afterward rather than before. 

This essential posteriority of the things per- 
taining to argument and demonstration would 
probably be found to hold good both of all the 



''Prior to Proofs 105 

greatest truths perceived and held, and of all the 
greatest actions planned and performed. As 
regards the reception of the highest truth, there 
would probably be found to exist a law by 
which, as Newman says was the case with Keble, 
this truth is first accepted as having claims on 
one other than those furnished by argument, 
while argument comes in afterwards to recom- 
mend and explain what was previously accepted 
on different grounds. Certain it is that no great 
thing is ever done as a result of logical explana- 
tion beforehand of the principles underlying it 
or the method by which it may be done. The 
great thing, when it appears, comes to pass in 
an altogether different manner. It is done first, 
and reasoned about afterwards. It is wrought, 
not according to a theory logically evolved 
beforehand, but, as it were, spontaneously and 
by the instinct of genius; and afterwards, from 
the accomplished work of genius, by means of 
analysis, argument and proof, the principles of 
the particular department of art to which it be- 
longs are derived and established. It is thus for 
the most part, that principles and rules come to 
be known; they are the result of the posterior 
activity of analysis, argument and demonstra- 
tion, dealing with some extant and independ- 
ently-produced work of genius. 

"I said just now," says Ruskin, "that there 
was no exception to this law, that the great men 



106 "Prior to Proof.'' 

never knew how or why they did things." ''A 
good composition," he goes on to say, ''cannot 
be contrary to the rules. It may be contrary to 
certain principles supposed in ignorance to be 
general; but every great composition is in per- 
fect harmony with all true rules, and involves 
thousands too delicate for ear, or eye, or thought 
to trace. Still, it is possible to reason, with 
infinite pleasure and profit, about these princi- 
ples, when the thing is once done; only, all our 
reasoning will not enable us to do another thing 
like it, because all reason falls infinitely short 
of the divine instinct." Cicero, in speaking of 
the rules pertaining to the art of eloquence, 
makes their significance to consist in this: not 
that, by following them, orators had attained to 
the praise and fame of eloquence, but that ''what 
eloquent men had done, that certain ones had 
observed and had acted according to, and that 
thus eloquence was not born of rules, but rules 
were born of eloquence." No great work of art 
is ever wrought by following a theory reasoned 
out beforehand for the doing of it; it is wrought 
by some inspired genius, spontaneously, and, as 
it were, unconsciously; and the theory is dis- 
covered afterwards by the reverent contempla- 
tion and study of his production. This is the 
order: first "the divine instinct," and then an- 
alysis and argument; first the thing done, the 
work of genius brought into being, and then 



"Prior to Proof.'' 107 

(very important, too, in their place) investiga- 
tion into and demonstration of the principles and 
reasons which make it great. 

In view of these and other similar analogies 
which might be adduced, it can hardly be re- 
garded as irrational and absurd to say that there 
are truths which have claims upon our reception 
''prior to proof/' and that, at least in regard to 
certain portions of the vast domain of truth, 
we may ''maintain before we have proved." 
On the other hand, the rationality might well 
be questioned of the contention that no truth 
whatsoever is to be accepted unless after proof 
in the form of logical demonstration. This con- 
tention, involving the supremacy of logic as the 
sole and exclusive means of ascertaining the 
truth, constitutes, as we have seen, the very 
principle of Agnosticism, being with it the 
article of a standing or falling philosophy. It 
is a contention w^hich does not at once recom- 
mend itself as sound and worthy of acceptance; 
on the contrary, it has been questioned and 
criticised even by those who may be considered 
to belong in some respects to the school of Mr. 
Huxley himself. In support of what we have 
just said, we beg leave to quote the following 
language of a distinguished man of science, 
Professor George John Romanes, the intimate 
friend and co-laborer of Darwin, and the founder 
of the Romanes Lectures, from whose remarkable 



108 ''Prior to Proofs 

"Thoughts on Religion" we remember to have 
quoted on previous occasions. 

"For the reason," says Romanes, "is not the only- 
attribute of man, nor is it the only faculty which he 
habitually employs for the ascertainment of truth. 
Moral and spiritual faculties are of no less importance in 
their respective spheres even of every day life; faith, 
trust, taste, etc., are as needful in ascertaining the truth 
as to character, beauty, etc., as is reason. Indeed, we 
may take it that reason is concerned in ascertaining 
truth only where causation is concerned; the appropriate 
organs for its ascertainment where anything else is con- 
cerned belong to the moral and spiritual region." 

Further on the same writer says, in similar 
manner : 

"As regards the part that is played by will in the de- 
termining of belief, one can show how unconsciously large 
this is even in matters of secular interest. Reason is 
very far indeed from being the sole guide of judgment 
that it is usually taken to be — so far, indeed, that, save 
in matters approaching downright demonstration, where 
of course there is no room for any other ingredient, it is 
usually hampered by custom, prejudice, dislike, etc., 
to a degree which would astonish the most sober philos- 
opher could he lay bare to himself all the mental pro- 
cesses whereby the complex act of assent or dissent is 
eventually determined." 

To the same purport, again, is the following: 

"The influence of will on belief, even in matters secular, 
is the more pronounced the further removed these matters 
may be from demonstration (as already remarked); but 
this is most of all the case where our personal interests are 



''Prior to Proof,'' 109 

affected, whether these be material or intellectual, such as 
credit for consistency, etc. See, for example, how 
closely, in the respects we are considering, political be- 
liefs resemble religion. * * * Now this may be all de- 
plorable enough in politics, and in all other beliefs secular; 
but who shall say that it is not exactly as it ought to be 
in the matter of beliefs religious? For, unless we beg the 
question of a future life in the negative, we must entertain 
at least the possibility of our being in a state of probation 
in respect of an honest use not only of our reason, but 
probably still more of those other ingredients of human 
nature which go to determine our beliefs touching this 
most important of all matters." 

These words are worthy of being pondered; 
they are the words of one who had not only 
patiently and profoundly studied the facts and 
phenomena of physical nature, but who had also 
looked deeply into the human soul and into the 
nature of that soul's ''complex act of assent 
or dissent." They are words, moreover, which, 
if they be true (and they seem to wear the aspect 
and to have the ring of truth), must have the 
effect of overturning the very principle of Agnos- 
ticism. For that principle, as laid down by 
him who invented the term, consists in, and 
stands or falls with, the affirmation, as regards 
all truth, of that priority, sufficiency and suprem- 
acy of logical demonstration, which in these 
words is so emphatically denied and so clearly 
disproved. 



XII. 

TWO MEMOHABLE UTTERANCES. 

We have recently been writing of Agnosticism, 
and we are not yet ready to dismiss the subject. 
In the present communication, however, we 
desire not so much to express at length our own 
views and opinions, as rather to call attention 
to two significant and memorable speeches, each 
of which, though the thing is mentioned by name 
in neither of them, contains an interesting and 
suggestive reference to this peculiar system of 
thought and belief. Both of them were delivered 
in England, and they are very far apart in point 
of time; the one preceded the other by twelve 
hundred and fifty years. 

The first belongs to the time when the Anglo- 
Saxon people were coming under the influence 
of Christianity. It was not many years after 
Abbot Augustine and his companions had come 
to Britain, in 597, it was in the early years of the 
seventh century, that Christianity, in the person 
of Bishop Paulinus, sought an entrance into the 
powerful kingdom of Northumbria. The king, 
Edwin, had married Ethelberga, a sister of King 
Eadbald, of Kent, under the express agreement 
that she should be permitted to take her clergy 
with her and practice without hindrance the 

110 



Two Memorable Utterances. Ill 

Christian worship of God; the king and his 
people, however, were still pagans. The king 
was prevailed upon by Paulinus to call together 
an assembly of his priests and nobles for the 
purpose of considering and determining what 
should be their attitude in regard to the new 
religion. It was in this assembly that one of 
the king's chiefs rose and spoke as follows: ''In 
winter, O king, when thou art sitting in thy hall 
at supper, with a great fire, and thy nobles and 
commanders around thee, sometimes a little 
bird flies through the hall, in at one window and 
out at another. The moment of his passage is 
sweet to him, for he feels neither cold nor tem- 
pest; but it is short, and from the dark winter 
he vanishes into the dark winter again. Such, 
O king, seems to be the short life of man ; for we 
know not whence we came or w^hither we go. 
If, therefore, this new doctrine can teach us 
anything certain, let us embrace it." 

This has always seemed to us, not only a very 
remarkable, but a very noble and pathetic speech. 
It expresses, in a very striking manner, the 
natural longing of the human heart for certainty 
in the things of religion, for some distinct answer 
to the great questions, what we are, whence we 
came, and whither we are going. Though the 
name had not then been invented, and was not 
to be invented for twelve hundred years, it was 
Agnosticism to which this man was objecting, 



112 Two Memorable Utterances. 

and from which he was seeking a refuge. This 
man was not satisfied with the agnostic's answer, 
"I do not know;" he had a hope that the "new 
doctrine'' might throw some light upon the dark- 
ness by which on either side the brief space of 
our earthly life is bounded. That was a happy 
and memorable hour when the assembly listened 
to these words of wisdom, when the king and his 
councillors resolved to renounce their pagan 
gods, and Paulinus, "riding to the spot which 
formed the principal seat of the idol worship, 
set the example of destroying the old objects of 
veneration." It was in this spirit that the Chris- 
tian religion was accepted by the prince and 
people of Northumbria, and by the Anglo- 
Saxon race in general; an element in the accept- 
ance of it was that dissatisfaction with and repu- 
diation of Agnosticism, which found expression 
in the speech which we have cited. Christianity 
claimed to give distinct answers to those ques- 
tions to which Agnosticism claims that no an- 
swer may or can be given; to communicate 
knowledge in regard to matters concerning which 
it affirms knowledge to be unattainable. And, 
judged by its consequences and effects, the 
truth and justice of its claim would seem to be 
amply justified. For Christianity has been, 
indeed, to England, a source of light and truth, 
of law and liberty; the friend of education, civili- 
zation, and all forms of emancipation and en- 



Two Memorable Utterances. 113 

largement; the parent of progress and prosper- 
ity, both material and moral. It is not Agnosti- 
cism, it is Christianity, with its denial and repu- 
diation of Agnosticism, that has made England 
the great and powerful nation which it has been 
and is. 

The other speech v/as delivered, as we have 
said, tv/elve hundred and fifty years later. It, 
too, was delivered before an Anglo-Saxon as- 
sembly; not, however, before an assembly rep- 
resenting one of the petty and warring kingdoms 
of a divided and distracted country, but before 
the Imperial Parliament of the British Empire, 
composed of the representatives of a Christian 
people. It, too, formed part of a discussion of 
matters pertaining to religion; in it is found, 
likewise, a reference to Agnosticism, not now in 
its ignorant and pagan, but in its educated, cul- 
tured, scientific form — the Agnosticism of the 
nineteenth, as distinguished from that of the 
seventh century. It is only indirectly and inci- 
dentally, however, that the subject of Agnosti- 
cism is mentioned (and then not by name) in the 
great speech to which we refer. 

The speech in question was that delivered by 
Mr. Gladstone on the Affirmation Bill of 1883. 
In 1881, soon after the beginning of Mr. Glad- 
stone's second ministry, occurred the Bradlaugb 
controversy and scandal, of the agitation pro- 
duced by which at the time many of us have a 



114 Two Memorable Utterances, 

vivid recollection. The question at issue in that 
controversy related to the right, under the exist- 
ing law, of "a, free-thinker of a daring and defiant 
type," like Mr. Bradlaugh, of one who was un- 
willing to affirm his belief in the existence of 
God, to a seat in the British Parliament. The 
controversy was violent and protracted. In 
1883, when the question was two years old, the 
government, in order to prevent the recurrence 
of similar scandals in the future, made a serious, 
but for the time being ineffectual, attempt to 
change the law by the Affirmation Bill of that 
year. This bill is significant, as Mr. Morley 
says, as showing ''how far Mr. Gladstone's mind 
— perhaps not, as I have said before, by nature 
or by instinct peculiarly tolerant — had traveled 
along one of the great highroads of human pro- 
gress." His speech on this bill ''was a noble 
effort. It was delivered under circumstances 
of unsurpassed difficulty, for there was revolt in 
the party, the client was repugnant, the opinions 
brought into issue were to Mr. Gladstone hate- 
ful. Yet the speech proved to be one of his 
greatest. Imposing, lofty, persuasive, sage it 
would have been from whatever lips it might 
have fallen; it was signal, indeed, coming from 
one so fervid, so definite, so unfaltering in a faith 
of his own, and who had started from the oppo- 
site pole to that great civil principle of which 
he now displayed a grasp invincible. * * * 



Two Memorable Utterances. 115 

These high themes of Faith, on the one hand, 
and Freedom on the other, exactly fitted the 
range of the thoughts in which Mr. Gladstone 
habitually lived. ' I have no fear of atheism in 
this House,^ he said. 'Truth is the expression 
of the divine mind, and, however little our feeble 
vision may be able to discern the means by which 
God may provide for its preservation, we may 
leave the matter in His own hands, and we may 
be sure that a firm and courageous application 
of every principle of equity and of justice is the 
best method we can adopt for the preservation 
and influence of Truth.' This was Mr. Glad- 
stone at his sincerest and his highest." 

In the course of his speech, addressing himself 
to the opposition, the great statesman and 
orator said: 

"You draw your line at the point where the abstract 
denial of God is severed from the abstract admission of 
the Deity. My proposition is that the line thus drawn 
is worthless, and that much on your side of the line is as 
objectionable as the atheism on the other. If you call 
upon us to make distinctions, let them at least be rational; 
I do not say, let them be Christian distinctions, but let 
them be rational. I can understand one rational distinc- 
tion, that you should frame the oath in such a way as to 
recognize not only the existence of the Deity, but the 
providence of the Deity, and man's responsibility to the 
Deity; and in such a way as to indicate the knowledge 
in a man's own mind that he must answer to the Deity 
for what he does, and is able to do. But is that your 
present rule? No, sir; you know very well that from 



116 Two Memorable Utterances. 

ancient times there have been sects and schools that have 
admitted in the abstract as freely as Christians the ex- 
istence of a Deity, but have held that of practical rela- 
tions between Him and man there can be none." 

Then, in illustration of what he had just said, 
he quoted from Lucretius certain Latin hexa- 
meter lines, the purport of which is that the 
gods ''dwell in supreme repose through endless 
time; far withdrawn from all concerns of ours; 
free from all our pains, free from all our perils, 
strong in resources of their own, needing naught 
from us, incapable of being won by our favors 
or moved by our resentment." After which, 
commenting upon the sentiment expressed in 
these lines, he proceeds to say (and this, thus 
led up to, is the passage concerning ''modern" 
Agnosticism, to which we have desired to call 
special attention): 

"'Divinity exists,' according to these, I must say, 
magnificent lines, 'in remote and inaccessible recesses; 
but with us it has no dealing, of us it has no need, with 
us it has no relation.' I do not hesitate to say that the 
specific evil, the specific form of irreligion, with which 
in the educated society of this country you have to con- 
tend, is not blank atheism. That is a rare opinion very 
seldom met with; but what is frequently met with is that 
form of opinion that would teach us that, whatever may 
be beyond the visible things of this world, whatever there 
may be beyond this short span of life, you know and 
you can know nothing of it, and that it is a bootless under- 
taking to attempt to establish relations with it. That 



Two Memorable Utterances. 117 

is the mischief of the age, and that mischief you do not 
attempt to touch." 

It is thus that the great English statesman, 
even while he was fighting against odds the 
battle of freedom of thought and toleration of 
opinion, spoke of the modern educated and 
scientific Agnosticism. To him it is 'Hhe mis- 
chief of the age/' the ^'specific form of irreligion 
that is characteristic of the present day." To 
him it is more to be^dreaded than blank atheism, 
not because it is in itself a worse doctrine, but 
because it is more common and prevalent, more 
subtly pervasive in educated society, and so 
more extensively destructive. It is indeed a 
form of opinion which may well be feared; as a 
system of thought and belief it may well be called 
*'a mockery, a delusion and a snare.'' Professing 
to be progressive, it is in fact retrogressive; it 
would carry us back to the condition of darkness 
and ignorance from which the Northumbrian 
thane desired to escape. Claiming to enrich and 
empower, it impoverishes and disables. Pre- 
tending to expand and enlarge, it is characteristic 
of it, as we have seen, to contract, to abridge, to 
curtail, to dwarf. It is a withering and blighting 
influence, destrojdng belief and depriving men of 
that power with which belief always goes hand in 
hand. And it is this because it rests upon a prin- 
ciple which, as we have shown, is incapable of 
rational justification, and cannot be reconciled 



118 Two Memorahle Utterances. 

with the constitution of man^s being and the 
principles and laws by which human action is 
governed. 

Who we are, whence we came, and whither we 
are going; whether there is anything beyond and 
above this present material and visible world, 
or anything to be expected after this brief 
earthly life is over; whether there is a God, who 
cares for us, with whom we may come into rela- 
tions, and to whom we are responsible for our 
actions — these always have been, and always 
will be, the most vital and concerning questions 
to the human race. To these questions the 
agnostic answer, ''we do not know,'' "we can- 
not tell," is no more likely to be permanently 
satisfactory in the twentieth century than it 
was in the seventh. These are the questions 
which Jesus Christ has answered. And, as it 
has been in the past, so it is safe to predict it 
will be in the future ; in all the great crises of life, 
when the souls of men are importunately de- 
manding an answer to these questions, and re- 
fusing to be put off, they will turn away from 
the ignorance and impotence of Agnosticism to 
Him and His everlasting gospel of light and life 
and power. 



XIII. 
AN AGNOSTIC'S EXPERIMENT. 

There appeared in the daily newspapers, not 
long since, a somewhat extended account of 
"a unique test of agnosticism," to be made in 
Cincinnati, O., by "a, well-known local attorney 
and an ardent follower of Ingersoll." The 
experiment which this man proposes to make 
is to be made upon his own child, '*& baby girl, 
only a few months old." This child, it is stated, 
will be brought up ^'in the faith of agnosticism." 
She will be taught no prayers and will not be 
permitted to attend Sunday-school or Church. 
She will be instructed to believe ''that God is a 
myth, that the Bible is not inspired, and that 
the Christian religion is false, gloomy, and an 
enemy of humanity. She will be taught to 
reason, and every effort will be made to raise 
her in the paths of virtue, charity, and kindness." 

In a statement of considerable length this 
father announces his own views and beliefs in 
regard to religious matters; that the Bible 
contains many contradictions and absurdities; 
that the Church has ever been the chief obstacle 
to progress, and ''the greatest enemy of the 
human race;" that there is no "hereafter;". 

119 



120 An Agnostic's Experiment. 

that ''when we die we are just as dead as any- 
other animal.'^ He then proceeds to speak as 
follows concerning the proposed bringing up of 
his little daughter: 

"Therefore, our child shall not be taught to believe 
in that which there is absolutely no evidence to substan- 
tiate, but shall be reared in the light of reason. She shall 
not be taught the 'Lord's Prayer'; it is suggestive of 
death, and therefore has a tendency to produce melan- 
choly. It proclaims temptations, and reminds one of evil 
and kingly power, and is altogether useless and harmful 
to the innocent mind. Trials, troubles and responsibil- 
ities will come soon enough; therefore we have determined 
not to burden our child with them so long as they may be 
avoided. She shall not learn to sing songs of 'Him on 
high,' except in ridicule, nor associate with children who 
do. Her mind shall ever be a receptacle for the truth, 
and not a waste-basket for superstition. She will be 
taught honor, virtue and self-esteem; to do all the good 
she may; to pity those who bend the knee to an imaginary 
being beyond the clouds; that intelligent persons and 
priests are 'out for the money,' and do not believe that 
which they preach, and are imposing upon the blind and 
ignorant; that they are the stumbling blocks in the way 
of intellectual progress; to be ever mindful of the feelings 
and sentiments of others, — to be charitable and tender 
of disposition; to recognize the brotherhood of mankind." 

It is interesting to consider this proposed ex- 
periment of bringing up a child, not ''in the 
nurture and admonition of the Lord/' but in 
the "light of reason. " It is one thing to propose 
and another to carry out; and one cannot help 
thinking of the difficulties which this father will 



An Agnostic's Experiment. 121 

probably encounter in the effort to execute his 
plan. It will not be sufficient for him to keep 
his child from Sunday-school and Church. It is 
not here alone that the principles of religion are 
taught; the very air is saturated with Christian 
ideas and beliefs. How, except by absolute 
seclusion, will it be possible to protect his child 
from being inoculated with the poison of the 
Christian religion? Certainly, if she is to be 
forbidden to associate with children who sing 
hymns of praise to God, her companionship will 
be extremely restricted ; rather, she will have no 
companions at all, unless they should be sought 
for her in quarters where her parents would 
probably be very unwilling to look for them. 

Further, it is unavoidable to consider what 
success will probably attend the attempt to 
teach such things as honor, virtue, charity, 
etc., in an entirely abstract way. Where such 
things are concerned, it is futility to deal in 
abstractions. The greatest force in teaching is 
that of example; we learn by this, rather than 
by precept. One of the chief distinctions of the 
Christian religion is, that, in its teaching and 
training, it relies chiefly, not upon theoretical 
and abstract communications, but upon the 
perfect example of the life and character of Jesus 
Christ. Whatever may be the alleged contra- 
dictions and absurdities of the Bible, there, in the 
New Testament, is the perfect life and character 



122 An Agnostic^ s Experiment. 

of Christ, unmistakably, undeniably, inevitably. 
The strength of the Crhistian religion lies, not 
in any doctrine or system of doctrines, but in 
the Person of Christ; and the power of its teach- 
ing, as regards the things pertaining to character, 
is found chiefly in Him and His example. In 
the case of this unfortunate child, however, we 
understand that the element of teaching by 
example is to be eliminated; she is to be taught 
honor, virtue, gentleness, kindness, charity, as 
so many abstractions. Whether these things 
can be so taught and so learned may well be 
questioned. Whether ''virtue" can be ''taught, '' 
is a question which has been discussed from very 
early times. It was the opinion of so wise a man 
as Plato that virtue cannot be taught; that 
honor, generosity, courage, hope, all the higher 
things pertaining to character, may not be com- 
municated in the same manner as things pertain- 
ing to science, but are differently imparted. 
These higher things follow a higher law. They 
go by contagion ; they are to be had only by con- 
tact with those who possess them. It is only 
life that can kindle life. Nobility, honor, 
virtue, whatever pertains to the higher life of the 
soul — these things are not capable of being 
"taught" in any simply theoretical and abstract 
manner. 

Especially may we question the qualification 
of any one to teach "charity" who begins the 



An Agnostic's Experiment. 123 

exercise of his office of teacher with so sweeping- 
ly uncharitable a judgment upon the ministers of 
the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as is made by this 
''well-kmown local attorney/' With something 
that savors of omniscience, he does not hesitate 
to declare that the body of Christian ministers 
is made up of two classes: they are either fools 
or knaves ; the unintelligent ones among them are 
fools; the intelligent are hypocrites and knaves. 
These latter do not believe what they preach; 
they impose upon the blind and ignorant; they 
are ''out for money." We hope we may not 
ourselves be guilty of a want of charity in calling 
attention to the fact that the judgment thus pro- 
nounced upon the great body of Christian minis- 
ters can hardly be regarded as an instance and 
illustration of that charity which 'Hhinketh no 
evil/' and that the pronouncing of it may well 
raise the question whether the man by whom 
such a belief is entertained and expressed is well 
qualified to be an instructor in charity to the 
child for whose proper training he mnaifests so 
great a concern. Apparently, whatever else this 
father may be prepared to teach his daughter, he 
can hardly be considered well prepared to teach 
her 'Ho be charitable." Let some one else 
teach her charity, supposing that it may be 
taught. Of the things in one place specially 
mentioned by the father, "honor, virtue, self- 
esteem," it would probably be best for him 
to confine himself to the last-named branch. 



124 An Agnostic's Experiment. 

Perhaps what strikes one most in this pronun- 
ciamento, is the extreme confidence, not to say 
dogmatism, of its assertions. It has the '^ absol- 
ute tone;" its language is the language of one 
who is absolutely certain of the things which he 
affirms. Notwithstanding he appears as a repre- 
sentative and expounder of ''the faith of agnos- 
ticism/' this man is not an agnostic, but a gnostic 
— using the two words in the natural and primary 
sense imparted to them by their etymology. 
That is to say, he is not one who does not know, 
but one who knows. He is perfectly certain of 
things in regard to which thousands of wise men 
have been in perplexity and doubt. He knows 
that God is a myth; that the Bible is an unin- 
spired book; that there is no ''hereafter;" that 
man, when he dies, is "just as dead as any other 
animal"; that the Christian religion is "the great- 
est enemy of the human race;" that Christian 
ministers are all of them either fools or knaves. 
He does not suspect these things; he knows them. 
He is so perfectly certain of them that he is 
giong to have them taught to his child as among 
the great and vital doctrines that make up "the 
faith of agnosticism." There is something cur- 
ious, and almost droll, in the contrast between 
the modesty and humility expressed by the name 
"agnosticism," and the confidence, the dogmat- 
ism, the arrogance of the utterances of some of 
those who profess to hold the beliefs for which 
that name stands. 



An Agnostic's Experiment. 125 

Because of its modesty and humility, one 
sometimes feels a liking for the name agnosticism, 
and an attraction towards agnostics. We are 
impelled to go over to them in a friendly spirit, 
and, to a certain extent, to associate and identify 
ourselves with them. We are moved to say to 
them: ''We like your name; in regard to many 
things, we are of one mind with you; we do not 
know. We are very ignorant; we are of yester- 
day; we know nothing. Encompassed by mys- 
tery, let us sit down in reverent silence ; perchance 
some voice may speak to us out of the mystery 
and the darkness. It is, after all, a world 'in 
which there is very little to be known, and very 
much to be done. ' Let us do with our might 
the things we know and herhaps we shall 
thereby learn some of the things v/e desire to 
know." Thus we speak; but, in some cases at 
least, we find ourselves entirely mistaken. Our 
friends, the agnostics, are not of this mind at all. 
They are not for silence but for speech ; they are 
not for modest and reverent consideration, but 
for affirmation of the most positive and dogmatic 
kind. They prove to be altogether other than 
their name implies; they are not agnostics, but 
gnostics ; they know, they are certain ; the mystery 
has been dissolved for them; and often they have 
no patience with any differing belief or opinion. 
We are not speaking of all agnostics, but we think 
we are correct in saying that there is a certain 



126 An Agnostic^s Experiment. 

class of them in regard to whom it is true that one 
is attracted by the seeming modesty and humility 
of their agnosticism, only to be presently repelled 
by its real dogmatism, arrogance and intolerance. 
After all, it is probable that, for genuine toler- 
ance and charity, we shall be obliged to go, not 
to Agnosticism, but elsewhere. Somehow, the 
agnostic sentiments we have been considering 
have caused us to recall to mind a certain passage, 
read by us a great many years ago, in the bio- 
graphy of one who may himself be regarded as 
in some respects a representative agnostic. It is 
an utterance of Carlyle's, and is one of the many 
instances which show how, for the power to pro- 
duce the best and noblest results as regards char- 
acter, he found himself compelled to revert to 
the old religious faith, from which he had in a 
measure departed. The passage, which we have 
taken the pains to look up, occurs in one of his 
letters to his brother John, and is as follows: 
^'On the whole, I take up with my old love for the 
Saints. No class of persons can be found in this 
country with so much humility in them, with as 
much tolerance as the best of them have. The 
tolerance of others is but doubt and indifference. 
Touch the thing they do believe and value, their own 
self-conceit, — they are rattlesnakes then.^' Com- 
menting in a foot-note upon the passage as given 
above, the biographer of the philosopher says: 
^'The italics are mine, for the words — true as any 
Carlyle ever spoke — deserve them. " 



XIV. 
THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 

Contrary to the assumption of the agnostic, 
the sacred Scriptures continually assume the 
possibility of knowing God. They do not, it is 
true, in any particular place or places, directly 
and distinctly affirm it, but the question as to 
this possibility they nevertheless answer in the 
affirmative, and in a manner much stronger than 
that of such direct affirmation. There is some- 
thing much stronger than the direct affirmation 
of a fact at any particular point. It is when, 
indirectly and at all points, the fact is silently 
taken for granted, as a thing with respect to 
which no question can possibly exist. Now it 
is in this way that we find in the Scriptures the 
possibility of knowing God. They do not argue 
the question of its being possible to know God; 
they do not even raise the question or betray a 
consciousness of the possible existence of any 
such question. They everywhere imply and 
take for granted the possibility of knowing God. 
This possibility is for the Scriptures a pervasive, 
everywhere present, unquestionable fact. There 
is no point at which they do not rest upon it as 
an admitted and certain reality. For they are, 

127 



128 The Knowledge of God. 

from beginning to end, the record of a process by 
which God has made Himself known to men. 
Nay, they are themselves such a revalation of 
Himself by God to mankind. 

Though nowhere directly affirming the pos- 
sibility of knowing God, there is much directly 
said by the Scriptures on the subject of this knowl- 
edge. St. Paul prays, in behalf of the Colos- 
sians, that they may be found ''increasing in the 
knowledge of God.'* He desires, in behalf of 
the Ephesians, that ''the God of our Lord Jesus 
Christ, the Father of glory," may give unto them 
"the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the know- 
ledge of Him.'* Sometimes this knowledge is 
spoken of as a thing the lack of which is to be 
censured and condemned, as where the apostle 
says, "For some have not the knowledge of God; 
I speak this to your shame." St. Peter begins 
his second epistle with the salutation "Grace and 
peace be multiplied unto you through the know- 
ledge of God and of Jesus Christ our Lord." 
Above all, there is a remarkable instance in 
which our blessed Lord Himself speaks of this 
matter of knowing God. It is the beginning of 
His intercessory prayer, where He says: "And 
this is life eternal, that they might know Thee, the 
only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast 
sent." 

This serves to show that, according to the 
Scriptures, the knowledge of God is possible. 



The Knowledge of God. 129 

God is a God whom it is possible to know. The 
relation between God and man is not such as to 
involve the necessity of man's forever remaining 
separate from and ignorant of God. On the 
contrary, it belongs to the idea of God that He 
should make Himself known to man; and, on the 
other hand, it belongs to the idea of man that he 
should be formed for, and capable of, the knowl- 
edge of God. There is that in God which impels 
Him to make Himself known to man, whom He 
made in His own image; and there is that in man 
which is capable of recognizing and knowing the 
God in whose image he was made. 

According to the Scriptures, the knowledge 
of God is not only possible, but also necessary. 
It is uniformly spoken of, not merely as some- 
thing which may be in us, but as something which 
must be in us, in order that we may become what 
it is our destiny to be, as the children of God. ^ It 
is always spoken of as a fundamental element of 
Christian character. It would perhaps be more 
correct to say that it is spoken of as that one 
thing which is absolutely necessary and indis- 
pensable that we may attain to the realization of 
the idea of our being. Our Savior identifies it 
with eternal life. For the meaning of His words, 
already quoted, ''This is life eternal, that they 
might know Thee," etc., may not be perverted 
and superficialized by interpreting them to mean 
that the knowieclge of God is one of the means by 



130 The Knowledge of God. 

which we attain unto eternal life, as something 
in itself different. The words evidently mean 
that this knowledge is eternal life — ^that eternal 
life, whatever it may be found eventually to com- 
prehend, has its essence, its principle, its living, 
potential, and all-including germ, in the knowledge 
of God. So broad, and strong, and comprehens- 
ive an expression is this expression, as used in 
the Scriptures, of knowing God. And so abso- 
lutely necessary to us is this knowledge of God; 
lying not so much upon the surface of things, as 
at their foundation ; being not so much one among 
other things as the one thing which above all 
others we need, for our everlasting salvation. 

Such being, according to the Scriptures, the 
possibility and necessity of knowing God, God, on 
His part, according to the same Scriptures, has 
left nothing undone that men may know Him. 
He has made Himself known, as we say, in the 
person of Jesus Christ His Son. It is upon this 
one act of God's that all our knowledge of Him 
depends. Apart from this, our capacity for 
receiving this knowledge would remain a mere 
negative capacity, and God would still remain un- 
known. He has manifested Himself to us in the 
person and life of Jesus Christ His Son, making 
it possible for us to attain to the actual possession 
of that of which otherw^ise we should have had the 
mere susceptibility. This is the meaning of the In- 
carnation ; it is God 's making Himself known. And 



The Knowledge of God. 131 

all our knowledge of God is in consequence of His 
having revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. There 
is no knowing of God apart from Christ. '^No 
man/' saith our Savior, ''cometh unto the 
Father but by Me." To know Christ is to 
know God. 

To speak further and more particularly, now, 
of this knovvledge of God, it is evident that, when 
the Scriptures speak of knowing God, they are 
very far from meaning simply the possession of 
certain information, no matter how extensive 
and correct, about God, The knowledge of God 
is not merely to know certain things about God's 
nature, and attributes, and character, and dealings. 
It is perfectly apparent that, in speaking of 
knowing God, the Scriptures use the word '^know" 
in a peculiar, pregnant, profound and practical, 
rather than theoretical, sense. When our Savior 
says, ''This is life eternal, that they might 
know Thee;" when St. Paul says, ''That I may 
know Him and the power of His resurrection," 
it is evident that they are not using this word 
in any narrow or superficial sense, as having 
reference merely to the understanding, as denot- 
ing something consisting mainly of thoughts, 
notions, conceptions, information. Words are 
used in different senses. The same word is 
sometimes used in a sense so entirely different 
that it seems to be an altogether different word. 
It is thus with the word "know." The word, 



132 The Knowledge of God. 

as it is generally used, has reference to the mind, 
the intellect, the understanding. It is by this 
that we know; and by knowledge we understand, 
for the most part, that which we gain by the 
activity of the mind. But it is plain that this 
is not the sense in which the word is used in 
those passages of the New Testament which we 
have cited. And it is evident that by the knowl- 
edge of God the New Testament does not mean 
simply and exclusively, or even chiefly, or at all, 
such knowledge as may be gained by the inquir- 
ing and investigating activity of the mind. The 
knowledge of God of which it speaks is not that 
of information, but rather that of identification. 
It consists in a deep interior oneness with God 
and assimilation to Him, resting upon a real 
impartation of Himself, through faith, love, and 
obedience, to believers. To know God is, in a 
certain sense, to possess God, It is a thing of life 
rather than of logic. When St. Paul expressed 
his supreme desire to know Christ, and the power 
of his resurrection, and the fellowship of His suf- 
ferings, he wanted something vastly greater and 
deeper than information; he wanted to possess 
Christ, and to be identified with Him in respect 
of the things mentioned ; He wanted to suffer, and 
to be crucified, and to be risen, with his Savior. 
So pregnant and profound a word is this word 
"know,'' as it is used in the New Testament, 
with reference to God, to our Lord Jesus Christ, 



The Knowledge of God. 133 

and to all spiritual things. The meaning of the 
word rises with the nature of the objects of the 
knowledge. According to the New Testament, 
the realities of the spiritual world may and must 
be known, but can be known only with a knowl- 
edge compatible and consonant with their 
own character. The things of the Spirit of God, 
according to St. Paul, cannot be received by the 
natural man: ''They are foolishness unto him; 
neither can he know them, because they are 
spiritually discerned." The New Testament 
clearly distinguishes between different kinds or 
ways of knowing. ''If any man think that he 
knoweth anything, he know^eth nothing yet, as 
he ought to know." Everything depends upon 
the kind or manner of knowing, whether it is 
accordant with the nature of the object to be 
known. As regards that manner of knowing 
which the agnostic has in mind when he declares 
the impossibility of knowing God, it is not upon 
this point that he is in conflict with the New 
Testament. When he affirms this impossibility, 
he afiirms only what St. Paul taught before him. 
If there were no other kind of knowing than that 
upon which the agnostic insists, then certainly 
there could be no knowledge of God. If it were 
necessary to gain and hold our knowledge of 
God by the understanding, just as we gain and 
hold any ordinary piece of knowledge; if, in 
order to know God, it were necessary precisely 



134 The Knowledge of God. 

and accurately to explain and define Him, as we 
do in the case of our ordinary conceptions ; if the 
knowledge of God were a matter simply of logical 
investigation, argument and demonstration, to 
be arrived at by strictly scientific methods, as 
we arrive at the knowledge of mathematical 
truth, solving a problem in geometry, or proving 
the existence of the law of gravitation; if this 
were so, the agnostic would be right, and no 
knowledge of God would be possible. The 
agnostic's mistake lies, not in his contention that 
God cannot be known with his kind of knowing, 
but in his assumption that this is the only kind 
of knowing there is. There is a realm of truth 
far higher than that with which the understand- 
ing is of itself competent to deal ; and, correspond- 
ing to this, there is in man, far deeper than his 
understanding, a power of recognizing and know- 
ing the things pertaining to this realm. 

Perhaps many of the illusions of agnosticism 
would disappear if the nature of the act of know- 
ing were itself more carefully considered. How 
we came to know at all is a very profound question, 
which the agnostic has a way of dismissing, 
without consideration, by taking it for granted 
that it is a thing exclusively of the mind. It 
is quite possible that the act may be a more 
complex one than he imagines, involving the 
activity of other powers besides those of the mind. 
Even as regards ordinary and natural knowledge 



The Knowledge of God. 135 

it is probable that feeling has more to do with it 
than is generally admitted or perceived. When 
we attentively consider the matter we seem to 
discover that it is in large measure by sympathy 
that we come to know. ''It is only like that can 
know like/' said an ancient Greek philosopher. 
''To know is virtually to love, and to love is 
virtually to know/' is the conclusion arrived at 
by one, in modern times, who had pondered long 
and deeply upon the question. "Love furthers 
knowledge," says Goethe; perhaps it would not 
be contrary to the truth to go further and say 
that love begets knowledge. At all events, as 
regards knowledge in general and the attainment 
of it, there would seem to be deep, fundamental, 
constitutional alliance and co-operation between 
that in us which is of the intellect and that which 
is of the feelings. 

It seems natural and rational that, as we rise 
higher in the realm of truth, and the horizon 
M'idens, those deepest forces within us, which 
as regards ordinary knowledge operate only in 
the background, should come more prominently 
into activity. The feelings and the will, never 
at any time really dissociated from the act of 
knowing, have ever5rthing to do with it when it is 
the highest that is to be known. God is known, 
not primarily by an act of the logical understand- 
ing (though in this knowledge there be abundant 
and superabundant room for the exercise of that). 



136 The Knowledge of God. 

but by a deeper and more fundamental faculty. 
It is fit that the highest without us should make 
itself known only to the highest within us. It 
is by the heart, in that profound and all-compre- 
hending sense in which the word is used in the 
Bible, that God is known. He is known by love; 
there is profound truth in St. Bernard 's saying : 
"Tantum Deus cognoscitur quantum diligitur.** 
Especially is He known by love in the form of 
obedience. Here the law is: obey, and thou 
shalt know; he that will do His will shall know 
of His doctrine. That secret knowledge which 
refuses to disclose itself to the acutest and most 
searching mental investigation willingly makes 
itself known to a loving heart and an obedient 
will. "The secret of the Lord is with them that 
fear Him; and He will shew them His covenant. " 



XV. 
FAITH AND THE WILL. 

There is something very remarkable and worthy 
of consideration in our Savior's words to Thomas, 
''Be not faithless, but believing." It is signific- 
ant that the words are a command. They seem 
to imply, they certainly do imply, that the act 
of believing on Thomas's part, that the act of 
believing on the part of those generally who 
believe, is not one independent of the will, but 
one of which it is characteristic that in it the will 
is interested and active. If belief were the nec- 
essary result, in which the will has no power to 
refuse to acquiesce, of evidence offered, it is not 
conceivable that our Savior should have used 
these words of command in speaking to Thomas. 
While there is always sufficient evidence for 
faith to rest on, and while the believer is always 
able to give a reason for the faith that is in him, 
the evidence is never of such a nature as to pro- 
duce mathematical certainty, and the act of 
believing is never compulsory in such sense as 
to be incapable of being vetoed and nullified by 
the will; but, in a certain deep sense, men believe 
when they will to do so, there being sufficient 
evidence to justify the act, and, when they are 

137 



138 Faith and the Will. 

unwilling to believe, they refuse to do so in 
spite of all the evidence adduced. 

The apostle who refused to believe in the 
resurrection of Christ unless he should himself 
see in His hands the prints of the nails, and put 
his finger into the print of the nails, and thrust 
his hand into His side, has sometimes been cen- 
sured with a censure which he does not deserve, 
and sometimes has been praised with a praise 
to which he is not entitled. Without doubt the 
incredulity of Thomas was, in a measure, con- 
stitutional and temperamental. He w^as differ- 
ent from the rest; he was naturally slower to 
believe; he had more difficulties to contend with 
than they. It is probably no fortuitous circum- 
stance, but one in which the hand of God's wis- 
dom and goodness is specially to be discerned, 
that he was not wdth them when Jesus first showed 
Himself to His assembled disciples, but was with 
them on a similar and later occasion. He was 
exceptionally dealt with, because he was an 
exception; he had more preparation than the rest 
for the appearance of the Lord, because he needed 
more preparation than they. In a certain sense, 
Thomas is to be pitied, rather than blamed ; 
certainly his Lord and Master, who knew the 
peculiar individuality of each one of His disciples, 
had the tenderest sympathy with him. He said, 
*'I "will not believe;'' probably in a certain sense, 
his difficulty was, that he could not. It has been 



Faith and the Will. 139 

said, ''Many say plainly, 'I will not believe,' 
v/hose words are estimated by the Lord's grace 
as meaning in many instances that they cannot. 
Thousands of others, alas, lyingly say that they 
cannot, but the Searcher of hearts knows that 
they will not. '^ It is the first of these two classes, 
rather than the second, to which Thomas must 
be regarded as belonging. 

Nevertheless, that cannot be accepted as the 
true view of the case of Thomas, which regards 
and applauds him as an illustration of what a 
man's attitude ought to be in respect to the high- 
est truth and the acceptance of it. Here, it is 
said, is an intelligent and right-minded man, 
who has resolved not to be deceived; he wisely 
rejected all second-hand information; he justly 
refused to believe except upon the testimony of 
his senses. His demand was in every way ration- 
al and justifiable, and very much in accordance 
with the modern spirit of scientific inquiry. 
This unqualified praise of the spirit and conduct 
of Thomas is just as much mistaken as the un- 
qualified censure of the same. It cannot be said 
that the course pursued by him was praiseworthy 
and exemplary. It is true, it was overruled by 
God for the greater confirmation of the truth of 
the Gospel, but this does not alter the essential 
character of it. It is impossible not to perceive 
something blameworthy in his positive declara- 
tion, ''I will not believe;" not to recognize an 



140 Faith and the Will. 

element of willfulness in his refusal to believe 
what he had good and abundant reason to believe, 
in the strength of the unanimous testimony of 
his fellow apostles, whom he had every reason 
for trusting. Certain it is that our Savior, in 
His Avords to Thomas and in His manner of dealing 
with him, by no means implies that his attitude 
as regards the matter of belief was a laudable 
example for others to follow. The apostle who 
was unwilling to believe except upon his own 
most wilful terms, deserved reproof, and reproof 
is unmistakably present in the words addressed 
to him by our Savior. When Jesus says to 
Thomas, ''Be not faithless, but believing," and 
w^hen He says, further, ''Thomas, because thou 
hast seen me, thou hast believed ; blessed are they 
that have not seen, and yet have believed;" the 
reproof which the words contain, however gentle, 
is nevertheless entirely unmistakable. 

That Thomas was commanded to be "not 
faithless, but believing," clearly implies that hig 
believing was in some sense dependent upon his 
wall, that it was an act which he could perform if 
he would. The words are deeply instructive. 
They teach us that faith is not, exclusively, or 
chiefly, or primarily, an act of man's intellectual, 
but of his moral nature. It is an act of the in- 
intellect indeed, but only because it is an act 
of the entire being, in which the intellect, without 
being violated or in any sense contravened, is 



Faith and the Will 141 

controlled and carried along by a power possess- 
ing natural, 1 egitimate and constitutional sover- 
eignty over it. In the kingdom of man's mys- 
terious being there is a ''power behind the 
throne.'' In the highest place within his soul 
sits, supreme, the will; without whose acquies- 
cence no other part of him is capable of sepa- 
rate and independent, conclusive and final ac- 
tion. Without its consent, or against its veto, 
nothing whatever can take place; least of all, 
the ultimate and supreme act of believing. It 
exercises the prerogative of endorsing or vetoing 
the acts of the understanding. It has the power 
to interfere, to dictate, to thwart. It is possible 
to discern this peculiar and characteristic action of 
the will in its effect upon the beliefs and opinions 
of men generally,even in regard to matters secular, 
temporal, political. It is perceptible in all cases 
in which the will is interested ; it is most percept- 
ible of all in reference to the believing acceptance 
of the truth of Christianity, for here the will is 
interested most of all. Of this constitutional 
and inalienable primacy and sovereignty of the 
will, as related to the understanding, which the 
writer considers to be one of the most central, 
vital, and far-reaching of truths, and to \vhich he 
has often given utterance, he has just come upon a 
very striking illustration in one of the sermons of 
Canon Liddon. Because we do not remember to 
have seen anywhere a better statement of the 



142 Faith and the Will 

relation of the will to the matter of belief, we beg 
leave to quote the passage here: 

"The real difficulties of belief lie, generally speaking, 
with the will; and nothing is more certain, and nothing 
is more alarming — than the power of the will to shape, to 
check, to promote, to control conviction. For the will, 
too, has a reasoning power, so to call it, of its own. The 
will is, in a sense, a second reason within us. It looks 
ahead, does the will. It watches the proceedings of the 
understanding with jealous scrutiny. It watches, and, 
if need be, interferes. It sees the understanding on the 
brink of embracing a conviction, which means, it knows, 
very much more than speculative assent; which means 
action, or suffering, that is to say, something entirely 
within its own pro\dnce, the province of the will. It sees 
the conviction all but accepted. It sees the understand- 
ing stretching out its arms as it were, to welcome the 
advancing truth, and it mutters to itself, 'This must not 
be, or I shall be compromised. I shall have to do or to 
endure what I do not lilce.' And such is the power of 
the will, the sovereign faculty of the human soul, that it 
can give effect to this decision. It can balk and thwart 
the straightforward action of the intellect. It can give 
it a perverse twist. It can even set it thinking actively 
how best to discredit and refute the truth which but now 
it was on the point of accepting." 

Such is the power of the will, as regards belief. 
No one can believe, except by an act of his will, 
or moral nature. The evidence in behalf of 
Christianity is of such a character that, after it 
is all presented, there always remains room for 
disbelief, if there be the will to disbelieve. It is 
possible to believe it, if the will assents; it is 



Faith and the Will. 14.3 

possible to disbelieve it, if the will refuses. It 
may be questioned why this should be so ; why the 
act of belief should be dependent upon the will; 
why, in legard to the most vital truths, room 
should be left for the denial of them; why the 
evidence in behalf of Christianity should not be 
conclusive and compulsory, leaving no room 
whatever for disbelief, or denial, or doubt. Men 
crave certainty. There are certain truths in 
regard to which absolute certainty is possible. 
No shadow of uncertainty rests upon the truth 
arrived at by means of mathematical demonstra- 
tion; there is no wavering of doubt in the belief 
with which the conclusion of the demonstration 
is accepted. Why should not the truth of Christ- 
ianity be demonstrated in a similar manner; 
why should the acceptance of it be compulsory, 
leaving no room for choice? 

To this question, the answer is, in the first 
place, that such demonstration and such accept- 
ance are, in the case of Christianity, impossible. 
There are truths and truths. Some truths there 
are which appeal to, and are capable of being 
accepted by, the intellect alone. The will is 
not interested in them; is not affected by them; 
cares neither one way noi the other; and so does 
not interfere. Such is mathematical and physic- 
al truth. But it is entirely different wdth the 
truth which Christianity stands for and consists 
in. This is not for a part of us, but for the whole 



144 Faith and the Will. 

of us, for our will and our affections, no less than 
for our intellect. It is not fit that that which is 
for the whole of our being, should be dealt with 
and accepted by a single part of us. Nay, such 
separate and independent acceptance is not only 
unfit; it is entirely impossible. When we come 
to truth in its highest form, to moral and spiritual, 
as distinguished from mathematical and physical 
truth, we find that it is characteristic of it that 
it can be recognized and accepted only by the 
action of the will and affections, concurring with 
that of the intellect. It is not capable even of 
being truly perceived by the intellect separately. 
It is of such nature that it cannot be known unless 
it be loved. No man can really know the truth 
w^ithout loving it. The truth is a thin,2: which, 
in order to be known, must be cnosen, mut^t b*^ 
loved, must, above all, be done. For these 
reasons, it is not possible that belief in the truth 
of Christianity should be the result of mathemat- 
ical demonstration, compelling and enforcing 
acceptance, and leaving no room for choice. 

Secondly, such compulsory belief in the truth 
of Christianity, if it were possible, would not be 
desirable. If the proof of the truth of Christian- 
ity were of the same nature as the demonstration 
of a mathematical problem, we should have no 
choice as regards the matter of accepting it; 
we should believe in it (supposing such a belief 
to be possible) with the same necessitated and 



Faith and the Will. ' 145 

passionless belief v/ith which we hold the truths of 
mathematical science. Our faith would be an act 
of the intellect alone, compelled by scientific 
demonstration; and would involve no activity 
of the powers of that vast realm of our being 
which is represented by the will and the affections. 
But faith is what it is, and accomplishes what 
it accomplishes, in large measure just because 
it does bring into activity the capabilities and 
powers of this higher realm of our being. It 
belongs to the very idea of faith to choose, to 
love, to trust. A faith that included no action 
of the will and the affections, that had in it no 
choice, no love, no trust, would be no faith; for 
this is the characteristic and essential thing in it. 
If faith were independent of the will, if there were 
no room in it for choice, then the momentous 
consequences which have always followed from 
it would no longer follow ; then it would no longer 
work the mighty works which it is capable of 
accomplishing and always has accomplished. 
Of such a faith (if it might still be called by that 
name) no such things could ever be said as are 
said in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. The 
element of acting on trust, which is supposed to 
be its weakness, is its strength and its glory. 
Great is the power of trust. George Eliot says 
that "they who trust us educate us;" perhaps 
it is a deeper truth that they who themselves 
trust are thereby educated. We are educated 



146 Faith and the Will, 

by being trusted; still more are we educated bT 
trusting. The element of choice, which it is 
proposed to eliminate from faith, is one of the 
principal and most powerful means of developing 
that character which is the supreme aim of 
Christianity. Great is the power of choice. It 
is the same writer who somewhere defines char- 
acter as "the result of reiterated choices.'' The 
mighty power of faith to develop character 
is largely because of the element of choice there 
is in it ; of this it would be deprived if the evidence 
for the truth with which it deals were of such a 
nature as to leave no room for choice. 

Faith is, chiefly, an act of the chief part of 
our being. It is of man's moral, far more than 
of his intellectual nature. It is of the intellect, 
indeed, but it is of the will and the affections 
still more. It is an everlasting truth that "with 
the heart man believeth unto righteousness.", 



XVL 
AGREEMENT AND DISAGREEMENT. 

Mr. John Morley, in his ''Life of Edmund 
Burke, " writing of the mutual esteem and strong 
friendship which, notwithstanding no small differ- 
ence of opinion, especially in regard to political 
matters, existed between Burke and Dr. Samuel 
Johnson, says that 'Hhey always parted, in the 
deep and pregnant phraseof a sage of our own day, 
except in opinion not disagreeing. '^ 

''Except in opinion not disagreeing,'' — ^it is 
indeed a deep and pregnant phrase. It implies 
the great truth, so liable to be forgotten, that real 
agreement or oneness may exist in spite of differ- 
ence and disagreement. In particular, it assigns 
to opinion that relatively unimportant position 
which is all that it is rightfully entitled to. 
"Except in opinion," — how finely this qualifying 
and parenthetical clause ascribes to disagreement 
in opinion its proper place of inferiority and in- 
significance, as compared with disagreement in 
respects more vital. The phrase is just, — it 
recognizes the existence of difference of opinion; 
but places it in the background, not in the fore- 
ground ; it locates it in the parenthesis, not in the 
main sentence. There are differences and differ- 

147 



148 Agreement and Disagreement. 

ences, disagreements and disagreements. Some 
are of the surface, others of the depths; some are 
of the frontiers, others of the interior; in other 
words, some are of the mind alone, others of the 
heart and will. And it is only these latter that 
can be said to be disagreements in the full and 
proper sence of the word. Of all who are truly 
united together in one, it will be capable of being 
said, in some sense, that they are, ''except in 
opinion, not disagreeing." 

Room must always be made, and in any true 
agreement room will be left, for differences of 
opinion. That union is strongest which combines 
(as it is perfectly possible to combine, as Burke 
and Johnson combined) sameness at the center 
with variety at the circumference; oneness in 
heart and will with difference in mind, thought, 
view. Differences of opinion there must always 
be; they are natural, unavoidable, not in them- 
selves injurious. Experience has shown that 
it is not possible, and if it were possible would not 
be desirable, to make all men think alike. If it 
were possible to adopt one man's view or opinion 
of the truth, and exact and enforce subscription 
to it and acceptance of it, as the basis of union 
among the followers of the truth, what would 
that be but to ''make a desert and call it peace"? 
Nor is it enough to say that differences of thought, 
view, opinion are unavoidable ; nor even that they 
are in themselves uniniurious. It may, not with- 



Agreement and Disagreement. 149 

out reason, be contended that tliey are, under 
proper conditions, salutary and beneficent, en- 
larging and enriching. They are wholesome, if 
they stand, as they may, for the mind's natural 
and wholesome activity; if they are the natural 
result of innocent individual thinking. They are 
enlarging and enriching if, as they may, they serve 
to give us larger and fuller views of the truth. 
In a very true sense, differences of thought, or 
view, or opinion, are the result of the vastness 
and opulence of the truth itself. So vast and opu- 
ulent is the truth that no one mind is capable of 
adequately comprehending and expressing it. 
Each one, after his own manner and according 
to his own capacity, perceives some particular 
aspect of it; and it is by means of these various 
aspects (the multitudinousness of them being be- 
gotten by the multitudinou ness of the truth) 
that we attain to some approximation to a com- 
prehension of the truth itself. 

In what we are saying of the legitimacy and 
necessity of disagreement, we are by no means 
losing sight of the still greater legitimacy and 
necessity of agreement. The place of disagree- 
ment is, as we have said, in the parenthesis; the 
place of agreement is in the main sentence. If, 
even in the Church of Christ, it is unavoidable 
that men should be ''of many minds," it is 
nevertheless necessary that they should all be 
"of one mind." The subject of agreement is 



150 Agreement and Disagreement. 

an oft-recurring one in the New Testament: the 
state of being united together in one is a condition 
frequently insisted upon by our Savior and His 
apostles. This is the condition which Christ in 
His intercessory prayer, prayed that His disciples 
might be in: *^That they all may be one; as Thou, 
Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also 
may be one in us. " It is the condition of which 
St. Paul speaks in many an affirmation and many 
an exhortation. How frequently the word '* one " 
occurs in his epistles! ''For we, being many, are 
one bread and one body." "For as we have 
many members in one body, and all members 
have not the same office, so we, being many, are 
every one members one of another." "That 
there should be no schism in the body, but that 
all the members should have the same care one 
for another." "Endeavoring to keep the unity 
of the Spirit in the bond of peace." "That ye 
be like-minded, having the same love, being of 
one accord, of one mind." "Be of the same 
mind one toward another." "Now I beseech 
you, brethren, .... that there be no divisions 
among you, but that ye be perfectly joined to- 
gether in the same mind and in the same 
judgment." "Finally, be ye all of one mind.". 
"Being knit together in love." 

Consider these expressions; they all of them 
have the same tone. " One, " "one body, " "unity 
of the Spirit," "of one accord,", "of one mind,". 



Agreement and Disagreement. 151 

"perfectly joined together," "knit together in 
love," — these all speak of and magnify agreement. 
It is to be observed, however, that none of them 
denies or disavows what we have just been saying 
as regards difference and disagreement. The 
agreement here spoken of is that which we have 
already mentioned; it is of the depths, and not 
of the surface ; of the interior, instead of the fron- 
tiers; of the will and heart, rather than the mind. 
It is not to be of one view, but to be "of one 
accord;" it is not a being knit together in opinion 
but a being ''knit together in love." The agree- 
ment upon which the New Testament continual- 
ly insists, is not a mental and theoretical, but 
a moral and practical, thing. True, St. Paul 
uses the word "mind;" he says, "of one mind;" 
"of the same mind;" "perfectly joined together 
in the same mind and in the same judgment." 
But, far from being used exclusively, or even pre- 
dominantly, with reference to the intellect or 
understanding, nothing could be more intensely 
moral and practical than this word "mind," as 
thus used by St. Paul. To be "of one mind" is 
not to be of the same opinion, but to care for, to 
have the heart set upon, the same thing. The 
practical import of the term is evident from the 
following expressions: "mind not high things;" 
"who mind earthly things;" "let us walk by the 
same rule, let us mind the same things;" "let 
this mind be in you which was also in Christ 



152 Agreement and Disagreement. 

Jesus." These expressions, all of them, relate, 
not to intellectual conceptions, but to disposition, 
feeling, desire, aim, purpose, conduct. 

It is not anything mental, but something 
moral and practical, which constitutes that 
agreement upon which it is characteristic of the 
New Testament to insist. And it is not anything 
mental, but something moral and practical, 
which constitutes the disagreement condemned 
by it as heresy. Of heresy, in the modern sense 
of mere intellectual error, the New Testament 
would seem to know nothing. Of the three 
passages in which the word occurs, one mentions 
''heresies" in connection with ''divisions." 
In another they are enumerated among the 
"works of the flesh;" "hatred, variance, emula- 
tions, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies. " It is in 
such company that heresy is found. In the 
third, St. Peter speaks of false teachers, bringing 
in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord 
that bought them;" whose "pernicious ways" 
many shall follow. The practical import of the 
word, in all these passages, is sufficiently apparent. 
It is significant that, when any one undertakes 
to inquire into the nature of the New Testament 
heresy, he is obliged to acknowledge this moral 
character of it. Philips Brooks writes in one of 
his note-books ("Life and Letters of Phillips 
Brooks," vol. ii, p. 86): 

"I have been writing to-day an essay on 'Heresy, 'and 



Agreement and Disagreement. 153 

have got quite interested in the subject. I have been 
rather surprised to find how clearly in the New Testament 
and all the way down in the healthiest periods of theology, 
as in Augustine and in the English Reformation at its 
best, Heresy has meant obstinacy, a fault of the Will, 
not a mistake of the Intellect. The worst persecutors 
seem to me to have had some dim feeling of this when 
they reconciled themselves to the burning of heretics. 
They must have had some feeling of the moral character 
of heresy, however woefully their prejudices may have 
blinded them in imputing it in special cases." 

At an earlier day, another eminent man, Dr. 
Thomas Arnold, of Rugby, had expressed the 
same belief as regards the moral and practical 
character of the New Testament heresy. In one 
of his letters ('^Stanley's Life of Arnold," vol. 
i., p. 319) he writes: 

"Meantime, I wdsh to remind you that one of St. Paul's 
favorite notions of heresy is 'a doting about strifes of 
words. ' One side may be right in such a strife, and the 
other wrong, but both are heretical as to Christianity 
because they lead men's minds away from the love of 
God and of Christ to questions essentially tempting to 
the intellect, and which tend to no profit towards godli- 
ness. And again, I think you will find that all the 'false 
doctrines' spoken of by the apostles are doctrines of 
sheer wickedenss; that their counterpart in modern 
times is to be found in the Anabaptists of Munster, or the 
Fifth Monarchy Men, or in mere secular High Church- 
men, or hypocritical Evangelicals, — in those who make 
Christianity minister to lust, ot to selfishness, or to am- 
bition; not in those who interpret the scriptures to the 
best of their conscience and ability, be their interpreta- 
tion ever so erroneous." 



154 Agreement and Disagreement. 

Such, as regards the New Testament heresy,, 
are the expressed beliefs of men whose insight 
and judgment will be acknowledged to be worthy 
of confidence. And they are worthy of consider- 
ation at a time in which a disposition is very pre- 
valent to regard heresy as an intellectual error. 

Such, according to the New Testament, would 
seem to be the nature of agreement and disagree- 
ment. Both of them are of a moral and prac- 
tical character. To agree is not to be of the same 
opinion, but to be "of one accord," to be one in 
feeling and desire, in will, purpose, intention.- 
Of many who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincer- 
ity, it may be said that they are, "except in 
opinion, not disagreeing". On the other hand, ta 
disagree is not merely to hold a different opinion 
or view, but to hold that opinion or view, what- 
ever it may be, in an arbitrary, arrogant, defiant, 
obstinate spirit, in the spirit of separation and 
division, of variance and strife. It is not to be 
denied that heresy may be, that it generally is, 
associated with the holding of erroneous views, 
opinions, beliefs ; what is to be denied is that the 
heretical quality consists in these, in themselves 
considered. It consists, rather, in the manner in 
which these are held. In a deep sense, it is true 
that it is the manner or spirit in which a view is 
held, rather than the view itself, that matters. 
That a man holds a different opinion on this or 
that point may signify little. But when a man de- 



Agreement and Disagreement. 155 

tachesand isolates himself from the general body 
to which he belongs ; when he makes light of the 
belief of the generality, as compared with his own, 
slighting, disparaging and contemning the 
"quod semper, uhique, et ah omnibus '' ; when he 
selfishly and arbitrarily chooses for himself 
(which is the very meaning of the word '' heresy '0 
a doctrine differing from that of the rest, and 
especially when he holds this doctrine in an 
arrogant, defiant, obstinate manner, in the spirit 
of separation and division, contention and 
strife — that is the proper spirit of disagreement; 
that is of the nature of the New Testament heresy ; 
and it is this, not because it is an intellectual, 
but because it is a moral and practical, thing. 
It would be easy to point out how, as regards 
certain views and beliefs, which have within 
recent times been regarded as heretical, and 
which, in some cases, alas ! have given rise to the 
melancholy ''heresy-trial," the heresy (if there 
was one) consisted more in the spirit in which the 
doctrine was held, than in the doctrine itself. 
A clergyman, who has spent all the years of 
his long ministry in the service of the Episcopal 
Church, recently said, in a letter to the writer, in 
which mention was made of questions agitating 
the Church at the present time: ''If every one 
were kind, there would be no heresy trials. I have 
lost all desire to induce people to think as I do. 
Controversy whets the intellect, but hardens the 



156 Agreement and Disagreement. 

heart; — at least, is apt to. . . .The evils of liberty- 
are great, but those of slavery are greater. Better 
for people to think wrong than not to think. 
That seems to be the trouble in all our Churches, 
that we have encased Christianity in rigid forms 
of creed and ritual, and thus shut out so many who 
love Christ and their fellow-men, but must think 
for themselves." These sentiments, in the 
spirit of which there are many who will unite, 
caused the wTiter to reflect upon the strange 
way in which the intellect divides, and the heart 
unites. When Christian persons differ, it is in 
their views and opinions that they differ; when 
they are one, it is in will, in heart, in spirit, that 
they are one. 



XVII. 
THE KNOWN AND THE UNKNOWN. 

The writer laid down the book he was reading, 
because the passage upon which he had come was 
so suggestive and at the same time so expressive 
of his own views and feelings in regard to the 
subject under discussion, that he wished to give 
to the author's utterances a few moments of 
reflection. The volume was ^'From a College 
Window/' by Arthor Christopher Benson, an 
author of whose writings, after having read his 
biography of his father, Archbishop Benson, the 
writer had desired to obtain some further knowl- 
edge. The particular essay in which the passage 
in question occurs is that on "Books," in which 
the author distinguishes three motives for read- 
ing, "the first, purely pleasurable; the second, 
intellectual ; the third, what may be called ethical." 
The passage itself, which occurs in the discussion 
of the third of these three motives, is as follows: 

"I do not know why so much that is hard and painful 
and sad is interwoven with our life here; but I see, or seem 
to see, that it is meant to be so interwoven. All the 
best and most beautiful flowers of character and thought 
seem to me to spring up in the track of suffering; and 
what is the most sorrowful of all mysteries, the mystery 
of death, the ceasing to be, the relinquishing of our hopes 

157 



158 The Known and the Unknown. 

and dreams, the breaking of our dearest ties, becomes 
more solemn and awe-inspiring the nearer we advance 
to it. 

"I do not mean that we are to go and search for un- 
happiness; but, on the other hand, the only happiness 
worth seeking for is a happiness which takes all these 
dark things into account, looks them in the face, reads 
the secret of their dim eyes and set lips, dwells with them, 
and learns to be tranquil in their presence. 

"In this mood — ^and it is a mood which no thoughtful 
man can hope or ought to wish to escape — reading be- 
comes less and less a search for instructive and impressive 
facts, and more and more a quest after wisdom and truth 
and emotion. More and more I feel the impenetrability 
of the mystery that surrounds us; the phenomena of 
nature, the discoveries of science, instead of raising the 
veil, seem only to make the problem more complex, more 
bizarre, more insoluble; the investigation of the laws of 
light, of electricity, of chemical action, of the causes 
of disease, the influence of heredity — all these things may 
minister to our convenience and our wealth, but they make 
the mind of God, the nature of the First Cause, an in- 
finitely more mysterious and inconceivable problem." 

What is here said, especiallj'' what is incident- 
ally affirmed of the relation between suffering 
and ''all the best and most beautiful flowers 
of character and thought," affords much food 
for reflection. We are at present, however, 
quoting the passage chiefly because of what it 
says as regards the seemingly ever-increasing 
impenetrability of the mystery that surrounds us, 
an impenetrability which seems to increase, not 
only in spite of, but, as it were, in consequence 



The Known and (he Unknown. 159 

of; and in proportion to, the additions which the 
discoveries of science are continually making to 
the world's stock of knowledge. The more the 
realm of the known is expanded, the more like- 
wise the realm of the unknown is expanded; the 
two keep pace with each other. Our knowledge 
seems but to reveal and increase our ignorance. 
Seemingly, logically, it ought to be the other way. 
Every enlargement of the domain of the known 
ought to be accompanied, it would seem, by a 
corresponding diminution of the domain of the 
unknown. It is not unnatural to take it for 
granted, as is sometimes done, that this is actually 
the case. The increase of human knowledge, the 
investigation into and the exploration of the laws 
of the universe and of the human mind, the mul- 
titudinous and marvelous discoveries of science 
within modern times, — ^these things are sometimes 
spoken of as if they involved a real diminution of 
the territory of the unknown ; and it is sometimes 
hinted or implied that this spirit of investigation 
and discovery is destined to go on "conquering 
and to conquer," until, if it shall have not reveal- 
ed all secrets and solved all problems, it will at 
least have reduced the realm of the unknown to 
inconsiderable dimensions. 

Now, it is possible sincerely to rejoice over 
every new discovery of science, over every ascer- 
tained fact, over every addition to the stock 
of human knowledge ; and it is possible to admit 



160 The Known and the Unknown., 

that "within certain strictly-defined bounds, 
every increase of that which is known is a dim- 
inution of that which remains unknown, — a dim- 
inution of it, that is, within those bounds ; while 
yet one perceives the deeply significant and im- 
pressive truth, affirmed in the passage we have 
quoted, that every expansion of the boundaries 
of the known is at the same time an expansion 
of the boundaries of the unknown. Not, indeed, ab- 
solutely; not, that is, that the unknown becomes 
actually larger than it was before ; but it becomes 
larger to our perception and apprehension; it is 
seen and known and felt to be increased by every 
increase of our knoweldge. Perhaps it is mostly 
those who look on and observe the discoveries of 
science from the outside that are apt to regard 
them as so many actual encroachments upon the 
domain of the unknown. Those, on the other 
hand, by whom these discoveries are made are 
more likely to be impressed with a sense of the 
mystery ever baffling them, and retreating before 
their advances, with a consciousness of the world 
of the unknown and the undiscoverable, whose 
magnitude increases, instead of diminishing, with 
every new discovery that is made. It is signific- 
ant that it was Professor Huxley who invented 
the term '^agnostic,'' so expressive of helpless 
ignorance of all that lies beyond a certain inex- 
orable line which science is incapable of crossing. 
And Herbert Spencer, in his famous sentence, 



The Known and the Unknown. 161 

"Amid the mysteries which become more myster- 
ious the more they are thought about, there will 
remain the absolute certainty that we are ever 
in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy 
from which all things proceed/' makes the same 
confession; the mysteries become more, and not 
less, mysterious; with every increase of the terri- 
tory of the known, the territory of the unknown is 
correspondingly increased ; every pushing forward 
of the boundaries of knowledge is at the same 
time a lengthening of the line along which light 
comes in contact v/ith darkness. Some years 
ago the writer heard what seemed to him a very 
striking illustration of this truth. It occurred 
in conversation with a friend, an educated gentle- 
man, a member of the Society of Friends. Per- 
haps the circumstance that he was the son of a 
distinguished mathematician, and was himself 
not uninterested in mathematical science, 
may account for the mathematical character of 
the illustration. Our friend was speaking of this 
very matter, of the spread of knowledge, of the 
marvelous discoveries of science, and especially 
of human knowledge in relation to human ignor- 
ance. ''Suppose," said he, ''for the sake of illus- 
tration, we represent our knowledge, whatever 
it may be, by a circle of light in the midst of sur- 
rounding darkness; a circle, say, one foot in 
diameter; then we shall have, at the circumfer- 
ence of it, approximately, three feet of cont t 



162 The Known and the Unknown, 

with darkness. Let knowledge increase; let the 
circle needed to represent it be enlarged to one 
three feet in diameter ; instantly the line of contact 
with darkness is increased to nine feet. Let the 
circle be expanded to nine feet in diameter, and 
the line of darkness surrounding it will at once 
be expanded to twenty-seven feet. And so on, in 
geometrical progression; the greater the light, 
the greater is the darkness confronting it, or, at 
least, the more extended the line along which 
they confront each other." The illustration may 
not be new; it may not have been original with 
him who used it, — there is nothing new under the 
sun; but it was the first and only time the writer 
heard it used, and it impressed him as illustrating, 
in a very striking manner, the paradoxical truth 
that the realm of the unknown is not diminished, 
but is rather increased, by every increase in the 
realm of the known, and that the things which are 
mysteries to us are made only the more myster- 
ious by the ever increasing and multiplying dis- 
coveries of science. 

It is not our object at present to point out any 
inferences to be drawn, or any lessons to be learn- 
ed, from this peculiar relation between the known 
and the unknown, but simply to affirm the exist- 
ence of it. It may well be questioned, however, 
whether the ever-increasing mystery which 
surrounds us does not bestow more blessings 
than it withholds, whether a world in which the 



The Known and the Unknown. 163 

realm of the unknown is ever increasing is not a 
fairer, more interesting, more opulent world to 
live in than one in which it should be ever dimin- 
ishing, and which should hold out to us the ex- 
pectation of an approaching time when all secrets 
should be revealed, and all problems solved. In 
an age which is consumed with the passion for 
knowing, it is perhaps well to remember that 
there are things better than knowing. In a deep 
sense, the desire to know is more and better 
than to know ; and what, more than the unknown, 
kindles and keeps alive the desire to know? 
"Admiratio semen scientiae/^ says the Latin 
proverb ; and a Greek proverb, to the same effect, 
reminds is that wonder is the beginning of all 
knowledge; and it is always the unknown and 
the mysterious that breeds wonder. The wonder- 
ing soul is more than the knowing intellect. It 
is said that the absence of the desire for positive 
and accurate knowledge betokens a fatally dis- 
eased intellect. This may be accepted as true 
in the realm of the intellect and the things per- 
taining to it; the desire for knowledge, exact and 
comprehensive, is one of the signs of a natural 
and healthy understanding. But it may be 
questioned whether it is strictly and universally 
true, whether, under certain conditions, and in 
regard to certain subjects, the absence of such 
desire may not be due, rather, to the souFs 
poetic and imaginative temperament. Readers 



164 The Known and the Unknown. 

of George Eliot's ''Middlemarch" may remember 
a remark made by Mr. Casaubon of young Ladis- 
law: ''So far is he from having any desire for a 
more accurate knowledge of the earth's surface 
that he said that he should prefer not to know the 
sources of the Nile, and that there should be 
some unknown regions preserved as hunting- 
grounds for the poetic imagination." No one is 
to be blamed for desiring an accurate knowledge 
of the earth's surface; nor. on the other hand, is 
any one to be blamed for desiring that some un- 
known regions might be left for the imagination 
to wander in. And, indeed, even as regards this 
poor, small earth of ours (to say nothing of the 
myriads of worlds beyond our ken), there is 
little reason to fear that, even after the North 
Pole shall have been discovered, there will not 
still be left, in its depths, if not upon its surface, 
regions utterly unexplored and unknown. The 
human soul, in the region of the intellect, desires 
and demands the known ; but, in the realm beyond 
and above the intellect, it likewise desires and 
demands the unknown; or, at least, when on the 
borders of the unknown and the mysterious, it 
is not inconsistent with its nature to relinquish 
the insistent desire to know. It has been said 
"that before an insoluble mystery, clearly seen to 
be insoluble, the soul bows down and is at rest, 
as before an ascertained truth." 

And so let us come back to our author and to 



The Known and the Unknown. 165 

the passage with which we started. The author 
has been speaking of reading, not for amusement, 
nor for the acquisition of information, but of 
such reading as consists in '^a patient tracing 
out of human emotion, human feeling, when 
confronted with the sorrows, the hopes, the mot- 
ives, the sufferings which beckon and threaten 
us on every side,'' and is dominated by the desire 
''to know what pure and wise and highhearted 
natures have made of the problem." Of this 
species of reading he speaks in words so beauti- 
ful, and so consonant with what we have been 
saying, that we beg to be permitted to conclude 
this communication with the quotation of them: 

"The reading that is done in such a mood has little of 
precise acquisition or definite attainment about it; it is 
a desire rather to feed and console the spirit — to enter the 
region in which it seems better to wonder than to know, 
to aspire rather than to define, to hope rather than to be 
satisfied. A spirit which walks expectantly along this 
path grows to learn that the secret of such happiness as 
we can attain lies in simpHcity and courage, in sincerity 
and loving kindness; it grows more and more averse to 
material ambitions and mean aims; it more and more 
desires silence and recollection and contemplation. In 
this mood, the words of the wise fall like the tolling of 
sweet, grave bells upon the soul, the dreams of poets come 
like music heard at evening from the depths of some 
enchanted forest, wafted over a wide water; we know not 
what instrument it is whence the music wells, by what 
fingers swept, by what lips blown; but we know that there 
is some presence there that is sorrowful or glad, who has 
power to translate his dream into the concord of sweet 



166 The Known and the Unknown. 

sounds. Such a mood need not withdraw us from life, 
from toil, from kindly relationships, from deep affections; 
but it will rather send us back to life with a renewed and 
joyful zest, with a desire to discern the true quality of 
beautiful things, of fair thoughts, of courageous hopes, of 
wise designs. It will make us tolerant and forgiving, pa- 
tient with stubbornness and prejudice, simple in conduct, 
sincere in word, gentle in deed; with pity for weakness, 
with affection for the lonely and desolate, with admiration 
for all that is noble and serene and strong." 



XVIII. 
THE INDESTRUCTIBLE RESIDUUM. 

Whatever contributions the scientific movement 
of the past half century may have added to the 
world's store of knowledge, it cannot be said to 
have increased the world's stock of hope and joy. 
On the contrary, it would seem to have been 
characteristic of it to diminish the supply of 
these, to produce, in those who have chiefly come 
under its influence, a comparatively joyless and 
hopeless condition of soul. If it has been on the 
one hand an enriching, it has been on the other 
an impoverishing, process. If it has blessed, it 
has also blighted; if it has given one sort of cer- 
tainty, it has taken away another and a higher; 
if it has increased knowledge, it has destroyed 
belief, with which health and hope and joy go 
hand in hand. It has bred agnosticism and 
skepticism, to the depressing and disabling effects 
of which many earnest, truth-seeking agnostics 
and skeptics have borne mournful testimony. 
From Darwin down many of the chief represen- 
tatives of the scientific spirit and movement 
have lamented the decline within them of once 
cherished capabilities and powers, the departure 
from them of old and precious beliefs, enthusiasms 
and hopes. Here and there, indeed, one may be 
167 



168 The Indestructible Residuum. 

found who professes to regard this loss as being 
in fact a gain; but in general it is not so. The 
most of them speak of it in a tone of great sadness; 
they unite, in one form or another, in saying, 
with Professor C. K. Clifford, ''We have seen the 
sun shine out of an empty heaven, to light a 
soulless earth; we have felt with utter loneliness 
that the Great Companion is dead." 

In reading the biographies of eminent and 
representative Englishmen, whose lives have 
fallen within the period of which we are speaking, 
one is impressed with the characteristic dejection 
and melancholy of many of them. This is a 
condition for which it is easy to account. Nothing 
is more productive of melancholy than the long- 
ing for what is in its very nature unattainable; 
and the agnostic is one who, in consequence of 
the very principle which makes him an agnostic, 
is tormented by this longing. He is one who 
accepts the principle laid down by Professor 
Huxley, "that it is wrong for a man to say that 
he is certain of the objective truth of any prop- 
osition unless he can produce evidence which 
logically justifies that certainty," He is one 
who has committed himself to the supremacy of 
logic, and who demands for all forms of truth, the 
highest as well as the lowest, ''irrefragable demon- 
stration." But it is just the highest forms of 
truth, those truths which above all it behooves 
a man to know and to be certain concerning, that 



The Indestructible Residuum. 169 

are, by their very nature, incapable of '^ irrefrag- 
able demonstration," in the sense in which that 
phrase is used by logic. If the principle of agnos- 
ticism is sound; if there are no other capabilities 
and powers in the soul of man than those which 
are comprehended in his intellect; if logic is 
supreme over all, and there can be no certainty 
save that which it is capable of giving us; if, as 
regards the whole realm of spiritual truth, no 
knowledge is possible except that which is the 
result of "irrefragable demonstration" before 
the bar of the human understanding, — then our 
lot must be to be forever longing and seeking for 
what is forever unattainable; then we may well 
give up our beliefs and hopes, and surrender 
ourselves to the power of melancholy and despair. 

"If we were all, indeed," writes an earnest agnostic, 
"without a God, without a future, let us die, I murmured; 
cry not peace where there is no peace; end the miserable 
farce of human life, and go down with the saurians and 
mastodons — more perishable than they, because of frailer 
bones — to corruption. But in the very act of thus mur- 
muring, the centuries arose before me; I saw the proces- 
sion of the races over the whole globe. I saw their temples 
and great works; I heard their poems and prayers; I felt 
within myself immortal thoughts; and the miracle of 
what we call the mind became pre-eminent. I know we 
are not in the scale of the saurians and mastodons. We 
cannot perish like them. This world of ours, this wonder- 
ful microcosm of our bodies and brains, cannot have come 
together by chance. The soul of man, be it what it may, 
demands more — it requires a God. Then with my cries 



170 The Indesiructihle Residuum. 

I beat against the blue heavens. On the top of moun- 
tains, among the Alps, feeling myself alone and near to 
God, I have sent the passion of my spirit upward. But 
not an echo answers me." 

The passage which we have quoted is from the 
biograph}^, which we have recently been reading, 
of John Addington Symonds, the brilliant and 
highly-cultivated English man of letters, a char- 
acteristic and typical product of the dominant 
forces of the latter part of the nineteenth century. 
It is a biography from Vfhich much instruction 
and inspiration may be derived; it is the story of 
one who lived a toiling and endeavoring, an 
accomplishing and achieving life, struggling, all 
the way through, with a fatal physical malady. 
It is a life, also, which illustrates well what we 
have been saying of the inevitable melancholy 
produced by an indestructible and irrepressible 
longing, which demands satisfaction, and yet is 
incapable of being satisfied in the peculiar way 
in which satisfaction is sought. The passage 
quoted is from an account, given by Symonds 
himself, of the supreme crisis in his intellectual 
and spiritual history. In a letter written June 
16th, 1867, he speaks of the "disquietude,'' of 
his soul; of his destitution of *Hhe sentiment of 
belief ; that original, strong, unreasoned sentiment, 
by virtue of which Jowett cannot help it. " He 
says: ''I do not acknowledge any principles, teleo- 
logical, or otherwise, from which a God, in the 



The Indestructible Residuum. 171 

old, true, personal, creative, royal sense, can at 
present be proved." 

He rehearses the steps by which he arrived 
at this state. The process, he says, began at 
school, by a refusal to accept certain seemingly 
unreasonable dogmas. ''It advanced steadily 
with the growth of my mind; for I carried out 
to its logical conclusion the principle that I 
might test opinions or creeds, and pronounce 
whether they were of human origin or not. One 
after another fell the constituent beliefs of Chris- 
tianity, and at last, when I considered the history 
of all religions, and applied the canons of cold 
analysis to the central creed of all, I was forced 
to acknowledge that the personal Deity might, 
after all, be nothing but a mirage — a magnificent 
mirage of humanity — or, as I expressed it, a 
Brocken spectre, projected by the human con- 
sciousness upon the mists of the unknown." 
But, having reached this point, he found himself 
"face to face with death and weakness. I had 
destroyed the hypothesis of the paternal God, 
and had found nothing to substitute for it. The 
burden of proof was now thrown upon me. I had 
to seek some formula which should satisfy me 
about myself, the universe, the future." Alas, 
a ''formula" is a poor device with which to satisfy 
the longings of the soul. And, "cold analysis" 
is a very inadequate instrument for the ascertain- 
ing and apprehending of that truth which is in 



172 The Indestructible Residuum. 

its very nature a flaming and burning thing. 
Then Symonds returned to Chsritianity, for 
a reconsideration of its claims; only, however, 
to find that, in the light of science, its miracles 
were impossible and its dogmas untenable. 
Still, science had nothing to give in the place of 
what it took away; it had no power to calm the 
disquietude of the soul. The seat of this dis- 
quietude he discloses when he says that the sen- 
timent of God had disappeared from him "with- 
out the need of God being destroyed." He 
writes, passionately, of "the note of anxious, 
yearning, impatient, God-desiring, hungry and 
thirsty, exiled, footsore, feverish, blind, passion- 
ate, unhappy, skepticism in the present day. 
Give a man possessed by this fiend one creed, 
throw him a mustard seed of faith, and he 
will move mountains." He perceives and 
dwells upon the connection between his own 
unrest and that of the times: 

"This is not a merely personal history; it is the history 
of the age in which we live, of the age of the disintegration 
of old beliefs. A man like myself can only lose his relig- 
ious sentiment because the religious sentiment is weak 
in the men around him. We are undergoing the greatest 
cataclysm of thought that the world has ever suffered 
and in the midst of it some must perish .... The cataclysm 
began with the Reformation. That was the first and most 
powerful introduction of a skepticism which since has 
never ceased to work, successively undermining in the 
T^rorld at large.as I described its operation in my own mind, 



The Indestructible Residuum. 173 

all creeds from the most insignificant to the most vital. 
Science has helped; physical science, by showing that 
the old miracles are untenable; the science of histories 
and languages by comparing religions and putting them 
upon one footing. The most powerful acids of every sort 
have simultaneously been applied to the fabric of 
catholic belief , which is honeycombed through and through; 
the only portion which resists all chemistry being the 
noble life and helpful morality of Christ." 

It is these last significant words that have 
given this communication its title; it is for their 
sake that it is being written. We have been a 
long time coming to them; we could not give 
them except in their connection. We call atten- 
tion to the testimony borne b}^ this man of 
genius, at the time of the greatest crisis in his 
intellectual and spiritual history, when the tide 
of skepticism was overwhelming and desolating 
his soul, to the fact that there is in Christianity 
something which '^ resists all chemistry," some- 
thing upon which 'Hhe most powerful acids" of 
a destructive criticism have no effect whatever. 
In the midst of the destruction, or seeming des- 
truction, there is found an undestroyed and in- 
destructible residuum. Such a residuum is 
characteristic of every parenthetic wasting and 
desolation that occurs in the course of any vital 
process of development. There is always a 
remnant. What a great part the '^ remnant" 
plays in the Bible! When the flood has passed; 
when the destruction is at an end ; when the wast- 



174 The Indestructible Residuum. 

ing has ceased; there is always a remnant left. 
And it is characteristic of this remnant that it 
carries the whole in itself; that, it being left, noth- 
ing has been lost; that it becomes the basis of 
reconstruction, restoration, renovation. From 
the beginning the people of God have had reason 
to rejoice over the "remnant''; never has there 
been more reason for their rejoicing than there 
is to-day. 

The terms are very lowly which our author 
applies to the residuum of Christianity, when he 
speaks of "the noble life and helpful morality 
of Christ." Be it so; we quarrel not with the 
language. Apply to that life whatever descrip- 
tive adjective you will; call it the noble life, the 
beautiful life, the perfect life, the ideal life, there 
it is, undeniably and unalterably, the life, the 
character, the Person of Christ. Time cannot 
change it; fire cannot burn it; moth and rust 
cannot corrupt it; the "most powerful acids" 
have no effect upon it; it "resists all chemistry." 
And, Christ being left, all is left, Christ being 
left, nothing of Christianity is lost; for He and 
Christianity are indissolubly one. It is not a 
"formula, "nor a proposition, nor a doctrine, but 
a Person, that calms the disquietude of the human 
soul, that puts an end to its dejection, that deliv- 
ers it from its despair. Let the skeptic, even 
while he is a skeptic, accept that "noble life" as 
the model of the life to be lived by himself; let 



The Indestructible Residuum. 175 

him follow as his guide Him by whom it was lived ; 
and he will learn more than logic could ever teach 
him; and he will eventually, doubtless after many 
experiences, find a way out of the gloom and 
hopelessness of his skepticism into the brightness 
and gladness of faith. He will discover the 
truth of certain words spoken by Christ Himself: 
"He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, 
but shall have the light of life.'^ 

So, likewise, as regards the "helpful morality" of 
Christ. This, too, is a part of the indestructible 
residuum. It is speaking very moderately to use 
this descriptive phrase of the marvelous teach- 
ing of our Lord, of those words which, some of 
the greatest skeptics themselves being the judges, 
are the most wonderful words ever spoken on 
this earth. But, call them by whatever name 
you will, there they are and remain, per- 
manent, unchangeable, everlasting. When our 
author affirms that they "resist all chem- 
istry," what is he doing but bearing testi- 
mony to the truth of our Savior's words when 
He said:" Heaven and earth shall pass away, 
but My words shall not pass away. " The words 
of Christ are indestructible and eternal; they 
relate exclusively to eternal things; they are 
addressed to the eternal part of man; they have 
the eternal tone. Well, indeed, may they be 
called "helpful morality." To no one are they 
more helpful than to the poor skeptic, oppressed 



176 The Indestructible Residuum. 

with the melancholy of a melancholy age, 
'^exiled, footsore, feverish," striving and strugg- 
ling in vain, by intellectual and philosophical 
methods, to find out God. Let him give earnest 
heed to this ''helpful morality." Let him try 
the moral, as distinguished from the intellectual, 
path. Let him make experiment to ascertain 
whether doing does not lead to knowing, far 
more surely than knowing to doing. I^et him 
act upon the words of Christ, '4f any man will 
do His will, he shall know of the doctrine." 
And, doing so, he will probably experience the 
power of this ''helpful morality." By its help 
he will probably learn lessons which philosophy 
and logic could not teach him. By its help he 
will probably make discoveries which science, 
with all its powers, is unable to accomplish. By 
its help he will probably find a away out of the 
gloom and melancholy of his skepticism into the 
brightness and joyousness of faith. 

A skeptical soul is a melancholy soul; and a 
skeptical age is a melancholy age. For the soul, 
and for the age, the hope of deliverance lies in 
the undeniable and indestructible residuum of 
Christianity, which is acknowledged to remain 
after all the so-called "disintegration of old 
beliefs:" and, which remaining, all remains. 



XIX. 
THE QUESTION OF IMMORTALITY. 

The age in which we live has not improperly 
been called ''the age of the disintegration of old 
beliefs." All of those beliefs, from the least to 
the greatest, have successively been subjected to 
the dissolving chemistry of an intellectual and 
scientific skepticism. Acting upon the principle 
that nothing is to be accepted as true, that it is 
wrong to accept anything as true, except upon 
logically sufficient evidence, scientific proof is 
demanded in behalf of those truths, or alleged 
truths, which have heretofore, in a certain sense 
unquestioningly, been held by the generality of 
men. Naturally prominent among these beliefs 
is that in the immortality of the soul. Whether 
there be an immaterial soul in man, and whether, 
if so, it survives the dissolution of the body, — it 
is desired and demanded that there be ''irre- 
fragable demonstration" of these things. Now 
and then it is declared that we may presently 
expect, now and then it is announced that the 
w^orld is on the eve of, such demonstration. 
Sometimes this effort at demonstration assumes a 
curious and grotesque form, as when the news- 
papers announce a new and wonderful discovery 
(so obvious a device that one wonders it w^as 
177 



178 The Question of Immortality. 

never thought of before), namely, that of prov- 
ing the existence of the soul by weighing it. The 
bright idea V\^hich occurred to this discoverer 
was, to place a dying man on a weighing scale 
and to ascertain the weight of his soul by obser- 
ving the ''drop" in the scale at the moment 
of expiration. How often has one to exclaim, 
^'Non tali auxilio!" There is something pathetic 
in this quest after irrefragable demonstration of 
things in regard to which irrefragable demonstra- 
tion of the kind demanded, is, in the nature of 
the case, impossible. Nor is this impossibility 
a thing to be complained of, or regretted, or 
regarded as strange. There are different kinds 
of truth; there are different ways of perceiving, 
recognizing, knowing and holding truth. To 
complain that spiritual truth is incapable of 
so-called "scientific demonstration," is much the 
same as complaining that the beauty of an 
oratorio is incapable of being perceived by the 
sense of sight, or the beauty of the mountains or 
the sea by the sense of hearing. The principle 
holds true, that spiritual things are ''spiritually 
discerned." Our Savior once said to the Jews, 
" Whither I go, ye cannot come. " In like manner, 
spiritual truth, retreating into a world in which 
logic loses its supremacy, and the borders of 
which scientific demonstration cannot cross, 
says to the man with the scales, "Whither I go, 
ye cannot come." 



The Question of Immortality. 179 

It is impossible to read the history of any 
sincere and earnest soul that has come under 
the influence of the dominant skepticism of 
the age, without finding much serious and anx- 
ious consideration of this question of immortal- 
ity. This is particularly true of the autobio- 
graphy and correspondence of John Addington 
Symonds, to which we have recently made refer- 
ence, and to which, as regards this special subject, 
we may be permitted again to refer. In the same 
letter from which we quoted in our last commun- 
ication, Symonds, while denying that the loss 
of the belief in the soul's immortality must of 
necessity make men immoral, admits that it is 
attended by injurious consequences by disabling 
and debasing effects. 

"I feel sure," he writes, ''that the habitual condition 
of skepticism enfeebles and debases the mind, so that a 
long continuance in it renders the spiritual sight more 
and more confused. It used to be urged against skepticism 
that it made men immoral; but that skepticism must 
have been of a veiy coarse and insincere kind; such skep- 
ticism resembles playing the truant from God, not an 
earnest search for truth in painful, God-forgotten wilder- 
nesses. But I feel that the most genuine and noble form 
of skepticism, by withdrawing the support of the paternal 
God, by obscuring the future after this life ends, by de- 
nuding the soul of moral ideas and fixed principles, renders 
a man more lax in his ethical conceptions, more socially 
indolent, less capable of energetic efforts, less angry against 
evil, less enthusiastic for good. . . . Such skepticism is 
like a blighting wind; nothing thrives beneath it. How 



180 The Question of Immortality. 

can a man who has not made up his mind about the world 
and immortality, who seeks and cannot find God, care 
for politics, for instance? He is thrown back on merely- 
personal and selfish tastes and interests. He is aimless 
in life. He has no 'point d'appui, no root, but sprawls, 
lying like an uprooted plant which belongs to nothing, can 
attach itself to nothing, and gapes for any chance drop 
of rain to moisten its fast withering suckers. The longer 
this skepticism continues the deeper becomes the unrest, 
the more worthless appear the common sources of inter- 
est, the more vacant seems the soul." 

It is in this connection, it is immediately 
after this passage, that there occurs that passion- 
ate outcry after faith, after the power and peace 
of believing, which we quoted in our last com- 
munication. ''It does not much matter,'' writes 
our author, ''what a man believes; but for power 
and happiness he must believe something; he 
must have his foot 'tenoned and mortised' 
somewhere, not planted forever on a shifting 
sandheap. " 

Yet, though perceiving thus clearly and affirm- 
ing thus strongly the importance of the belief 
in immortality, and the injurious consequences 
of the absence or loss of it, Symonds elsewhere 
repeatedly manifests a certain remarkable dis- 
inclination to the doctrine, or at least an acquies- 
cence, if not a positive satisfaction, in the lack 
of any demonstration of the truth of it. He goes 
so far as to find a sort of solace in the prospect 
of extinction. Writing, March 5th, 1887, to 
his friend, Henry Sidgwick, with reference to 



The Question of Immortality. 181 

the hitter's announcement of his ''expectation 
of having to abandon in this Hfe the hope of 
obtaining proof of the individual soul's existence 
as a consciousness beyond death, " he says: ''I 
may add that it was for myself also a solemn 
moment when I read that paragraph, . . . through 
the measured sentences of which a subdued glow 
of passion seemed to burn. I do not pretend 
that I have ever fixed my views of human con- 
duct clearly or hopefully upon the proof of immor- 
tality to our ordinary experience. I do not deny 
that I never had any confidence in the method 
you were taking to obtain the proof. I will 
further confess that, had you gained the proof, this 
result would have enormously aggravated the 
troubles of my life, by cutting off the possibility 
of resumption into the personal-unconscious 
which our present incertitude leaves open to 
my sanguine hope." Then, after a discussion 
of the relation of a belief in immortality to 
ethics, he concludes by saying: ''I do not see, 
therefore, why we should be downcast if we can- 
not base morality upon a conscious immortality 
of the individual. But I do see that, until that 
immortality of the individual is irrefragably 
demonstrated, the sweet, the immeasurably 
precious hope of ending with this life the ache 
and languor of existence, remains open to bur- 
dened human personalities. A sublime system 
of ethics seems to me capable of being based, in 
its turn, upon that hope of extinction.''. 



182 The Question of Immortality. 

Such was the solace which this man of genius 
drew from the failure of all attempts at the 
"irrefragable demonstration" of immortality; 
such was his "sweet and immeasurably precious 
hope" of annihilation. ISlor did he flinch from 
this attitude when the greatest trial of his life 
came upon him, in the death of his beloved 
daughter, Janet. Writing, on this occasion, 
to the same friend, he says: 

"The pain of losing Janet was very great, and the des- 
iderium will remain permanent. There seems to be some- 
thing pitiful in this extinction of a nature formed for 
really noble life You tell me that you have 'no con- 
solation to offer. ' But really I do not want any. I know 
that I cannot get any. The loss is there, and may not 
be made up to me. I have long since bent and schooled 
myself to expect no consolation of the ordinary sort. And 
I do not think I feel less brightly and less resignedly than 
those who are basing their hopes upon unimaginable re- 
uniting with their loved ones, in heaven only knows what 

planet I have ceased to wish for immortality, and 

therefore ceased to hope for it. . . .1 have found that all 
life is a struggle, and neither for myself nor my fellow 
creatures do I desire the prolongation of the struggle. 
Being what we are, it is obvious that the continuation 
of consciousness in us must entail a toilsome Entwickel- 
lung. " 

To one who knov/s what the life of Symonds 
was, who is acquainted with its heroic and life- 
long conflict with languor and disease, it will 
appear less strange than to one unacquainted 
with the circumstances, that he should have 



The Question of Immortality. 183 

had no desire for a ''prolongation of the struggle, " 
that he should have had an aversion to what he 
calls immortality. But, indeed, it needs no 
such acquaintance to account for his views and 
feelings on the subject. For it cannot be said 
that immortality, in the negative sense of a mere 
non-cessation of existence, in the sense simply 
of consciousness continuing after death, and this 
is the sense in which Symonds seems to regard 
it in all that he says on the question, and in 
which it is regarded generally by those who seek 
for a logical demonstration of it, is in itself a de- 
sirable thing. On the contrary, if this were all 
that is meant by immortality, it would not be 
difficult to show that it is a thing not to be desired, 
a thing the hope of w^hich might reasonably and 
profitably be exchanged for the hope of extinc- 
tion. There is all the difference that can be 
between immortality, in the sense in which science 
persists in using the term, as a mere non-cessation 
of existence, and immortality in the Nesv Test- 
ament and Christian sense of the word. The 
one is negative, the other is positive. The one is 
in itself a poor, uninteresting, insignificant thing; 
the other is significant, interesting, opulent 
beyond conception. The one is not necessarily 
a desirable thing; it belongs to the idea of the 
other, naturally, constitutionally, necessarily, 
that is a thing to be desired and hoped for. 
Immortality, or "eternal life," in the sense in 



184 The Question of Immortality. 

which the term is used in the New Testament, 
what is it? It is Life, carried to its highest power 
as regards quality and as regards duration. Now, 
life in this form is our nature's greatest need and 
deepest desire. It is for want of life that we are 
weak, languid, miserable, perishing; if v^e had 
abundance of life, all would be well with us. It 
is the belief of Christian people that there is One 
who has " life in Himself, " nay, v/ho is ''the Life, " 
and that He came into our M^orld to impart this 
life to perishing men. Jesus Christ says, "I 
am come that they might have life." It is this 
life that is immortality, in the Christian sense. 
And this immortality so far from being the mere 
endless duration of the soul's conscious being, 
the infinite ''prolongation of the struggle," the 
eternal continuance of "the ache and languor of 
existence," is the end of all ache and languor 
and struggle; it is the resolution of all discords 
into final harmony, the perfection of every fac- 
ulty, the satisfaction of every desire, the ful- 
filment of every hope. It is purity instead of 
sinfulness, power instead of weakness, peace 
instead of struggle, permanence instead of evan- 
escence. 

It is to be regretted that, because of the pov- 
erty of our language, we are unable to distin- 
guish, except by circumlocution, between the 
two entirely different things of which we have 
been speaking. We have only one word, "life," 



The Question of Immortality. 185 

to signify both life extensive, the life which we 
live {vita quam vivimus) and life intensive, the 
life by which we live {vita qud vivimus). And 
yet the life by which we live, that subtle, myster- 
ious, inexplicable, spiritual essence, whatever 
it may be, is a thing entirely different from the 
life which we live. In the Greek language, and 
in the New Testament it is different. There is 
one word for life extensive, and another for life 
intensive; and the two are never confounded. 
The first is not necessarily a high or noble word; 
but the second, as Trench, in his ''Synonyms of 
the New Testament," shows, belongs 'Ho the 
innermost circle of those terms whereby are ex- 
pressed the highest gifts of God to His creatures. " 
Than this, the Scriptures "know of no higher 
word to set forth either the blessedness of God, 
or the blessedness of the creature in communion 
with God." When Jesus Christ declares Him- 
self to be "the Life" or "the bread of Life," 
or "the water of Life"; when the Book of Rev- 
elation speaks of "the crown of Life," or "the 
book of Life, " or "the tree of Life" ; when St. Peter 
speaks of "life and godiines," or St. Paul of "life 
and immortality," or the evangelists of "eternal 
life," this, and not the other, is invariably the 
word that is used. The other could not be used, 
for it is a common word, signifying life with ref- 
erence merely to the period or duration of it, 
while this august and noble word has reference 



186 The Question of Immortality. 

to its quality, and signifies the subtle, mysterious, 
vital and vitalizing principle which causes things 
to live. It is an important distinction; and it is 
analogous to, rather it is identical with, the dis- 
tinction between immortality, in the sense in 
which the Vv^ord is habitually used by those who 
are vainly seeking an irrefragable scientific dem- 
onstration of it, and the sense in which the word 
is habitually used in the New Testament. 

In the one sense, immortality is a shadowy, 
insignificant, by no means necessarily desirable 
thing ; in the other, it is a momentous and glorious 
spiritual reality, to the very nature of which it 
belongs that it is an object to be desired. In 
this sense it is as impossible for the soul not to 
desire immortality as for the lungs not to desire 
the air, or the eye not to desire the light. 



XXI 

THE IMPERISHABLE WORDS OF CHRIST. 

How much importance is to be attached to our 
Savior's words is evident from His own language 
respecting them. He said, ''Heaven and earth 
shall pass away, but My words shall not pass 
away." It may be instructive to inquire why 
it is that His words shall never pass away; what 
some of the characteristics are which impart to 
those words the peculiar quality of enduring 
forever. 

In general, it may be said that our Savior's 
words will never pass away just because they are 
the words of Him Vv^ho never changes, but is 
''the same yesterday and to-day and forever," 
or, because they are identified with the things that 
can never pass away. On a certain occasion our 
Savior said to the Jews, "The words that I 
speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are 
life." It was on the same occasion that Peter 
said to Him, "Lord, to whom can we go? Thou 
hast the words of eternal life. " This is the reason; 
the words of our Savior are "words of eternal 
life." Truth, spirit, life, these are the essence 
of His words; and these are the things upon 
which change and decay have no effect whatever. 

187 



188 The Imperishable Words of Christ. 

To be more particular, however, it may be 
said, first, that the words of Christ can never pass 
away, can never become obsolete or antiquated, 
because of the themes with which they deal. 
These are wholly such as relate, not to temporary 
and transient, but to permanent and eternal 
things; our Lord's words have to do entirely 
with unseen and eternal realities; with God, 
with the soul, w^ith eternity, with the things 
pertaining to the relation of our souls to God, 
and with their eternal destiny. St. Paul 
says, ''While we look, not at the things which 
are seen, but at the things which are not seen; 
for the things which are seen are temporal, 
but the things which are not seen are eternal.'^ 
This is the character of all the things that are 
seen; they are temporary; they last but for a 
time; they change; they disappear. And if our 
Savior's words related to them, they would pass 
away likewise. But it is the essential character- 
istic of His words thay they relate exclusively 
to unseen and eternal things; to righteousness, 
truth, justice, mercy, faith, hope, love, — such 
things as these. 

The reference to that which is permanent, as dis- 
tinguished from that which is transitory, is 
clearly discernible in all our Savior's words. It 
has been suggested by a recent writer ''that the 
divinity of Jesus Christ chiefly appeared in His 
power to select the essential, and to avoid the 



The Imperishable Words of Christ. 189 

unessential, topics of human life and work." 
There is always this distinction between the 
unessential and the essential. There are things 
unessential, incidental, capable of changing, 
and doomed to pass away; and, underneath 
these, there is always something essential, real, 
abiding, of which they are the imperfect and tran- 
sitory expressions. Forms change, but the 
spirit abides; ways, customs, fashions change, but 
human life continues; politics and institutions 
change, but government remains. Now, it is 
characteristic of our Savior's words that they 
have nothing whatever to do with the unessential 
and changeable things relating to human life, but 
everything with human life itself. They have 
no reference whatever to the changing fashions of 
the day, or the transitory politics of the time. 
They relate not to form, but to spirit ; not to cus- 
toms and fashions, but to human life ; not to poli- 
tics, but to the everlasting principles governing 
the relation of man to man. Had He spoken of 
forms or fashions, or politics, His words would 
have passed away; but, because He spoke of 
spirit, of life, of law, they cannot pass away. 
How our Savior seized upon the essential, 
we perceive when we consider the language which 
He applies to Himself, He calls Himself the Way, 
the Door, the Vine, the Good Shepherd, Bread, 
Vv'ater, — such things as these. These are the 
great, stable, unchanging things incapable of 



190 The Imperishable Words of Christ. 

ever becoming obsolete. Methods of traveling 
may be superseded; the past several generations 
have seen more than one method of travel and 
transportation become obsolete or antiquated; 
but the Way, — there is nothing about that that 
can become antiquated ; the way by which a man 
goes, in passing from place to place, remains the 
same from generation to generation. Many 
kinds of banquet there may be, and the prepar- 
ation of food may greatly vary according to 
time and place; but Bread and Water, food and 
drink, these must always be; these remain the 
same in the midst of all the variation, and form 
the foundation of every, even the most elaborate, 
repast. It is the same with all the terms our 
Savior uses in regard to Himself ; there is nothing 
in them that can be affected by change of place 
or lapse of time; they are as intelligible and applic- 
able now as when they were first used by Him; 
they will be as intelligible and applicable a 
thousand years hence as they are now. 

And this is true of all our Savior's words; they 
have all of them to do with the permanent, the 
continuing, the everlasting. Their theme is 
always that which is unseen and eternal. It is 
characteristic of our Savior that He turns away 
continually from that which is seen; He dispar- 
ages it; He makes light of it, however great it 
may seem to be, in comparison with that which 
is unseen. Of this we have an instance in the way 



The Imperishahle Words of Christ. 191 

in which the very discourse, to which the words 
we are considering belong, began. It is said: 
"And Jesus went out, and departed from the 
temple; and His disciples came to Him for to 
show Him the buildings of the templt>. And 
Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? 
Verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here 
one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown 
down/' In the presence of the mighty struc- 
ture of the temple, what a disparagement that 
was of the material, visible and transitory, as 
compared with the spiritual, invisible, eternal! 
Always our Savior's words relate to things 
unchangeable and eternal. They may have been 
suggested, indeed, in this or that case, by some- 
thing visible and transient, a vine, a shepherd 
leading forth his flock, a fisherman casting his 
net into the sea; but they themselves always 
possess the characteristic of relating to things 
invisible and eternal. In every case they in- 
stantly pass from the outward and visible sign 
to the inward and invisible thing signified. Our 
Savior dealt not with rules which may need to be 
changed from time to time, but with principles, 
which are the same forever. Once a man came 
to Him and said, ''Master, speak to my brother, 
that he divide the inheritance with me." That 
our Savior refused to do ; it was not what he was 
for. He said: ''Man, who made me a judge or a 
divider over you?" He said, also, looking 



192 The Imperishable Words of Christ. 

through the request into the spirit from which 
it proceeded: ''Beware of co vetousness ; for a 
man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the 
things which he possesseth. " The division of the 
inheritance would have been a poor and insig- 
nificant thing, and a thing for the moment only; 
but those words are the expression of an eternal 
principle; and will be as true a thousand years 
from now as they are now. 

This, then, is one reason why our Savior's 
words are imperishable: they have all of them to 
do Vv^ith imperishable spiritual realities, with in- 
destructible and eternal principles. 

Another reason why our Savior's words shall 
endure forever is that they are addressed to that 
part of us by which we are related to the eternal 
world. Treating of eternal things, they make 
their appeal to that in us which is eternal. They 
are spoken, all of them, to that which is deepest 
in us; to the vital soul; to what the Scriptures 
call 'Hhe heart." They address themselves to 
the immortal part of us ; to that in us which is the 
seat and source of all our life. For, one and in- 
divisible as is our complex and mj^sterious nature, 
certain elements are nevertheless to be distin- 
guished in it, and these are not all of them of equal 
significance and importance. There are parts 
of us that are more of the surface, and others 
that are more of the depths; there is a center, as 
distinguished from the circumference, of our 



The Imperishahle Words of Christ. 193 

being; certain regions of our souls are more like 
the frontiers, others more like 'Hhe interior" of 
a great kingdom. Especially is our moral and 
spiritual being, that part of us which is consti- 
tuted by the will and the affections, to be distin- 
guished, as a superior thing, from that part of us 
which is purely and simply intellectual. Some- 
thing in us there is which is central, vital, all- 
related and all-including, the ultimate source of 
all our thoughts, desires, resolutions, actions. 
This is, not the mind, important as that part of 
our being is, but, lying back of that, and deeper 
than that, our moral and spiritual nature, that 
part of us by which, as distinguished from know- 
ing, we love and will and act, that deep, immortal 
part of us whereby all the rest of our being is 
related to the spiritual and eternal world. Upon 
this all the rest of our mysterious being depends 
and turns. This is what the Scriptures compre- 
hensively term ' ' the heart. ' ' And it is to this that 
the words of Jesus are addressed; and their 
being so addressed is one of the reasons why they 
can never pass away. 

A great philosopher and man of letters says: 
''Would you plant for a given time, for year and 
day? then plant in the intellectual nature of 
man. Would you plant for eternity? then 
plant in his moral nature." The same writer 
says: ''One thing we see; the moral nature of 
man is deeper than his intellectual; things 



194 The Imperishahle Words of Christ. 

planted into the former may grow as if forever; 
the latter, as a kind of drift-mold, produces only- 
annuals. Vv^hat is Jesus Christ's significance? 
Altogether moral. What is Jeremy Bentham's 
significance? Altogether intellectual, logical". 
In another place the same writer says: "The 
most wonderful words I ever heard of being 
uttered by man are those in the four Evangelists 
by Jesus of Nazareth. Their intellectual talent 
is hardly inferior to their moral." 

This man, with his deep insight, saw clearly 
the difference between the intellectual and the 
moral, and what a difference it makes whether 
it is the one or the other that is dealt with ; rather, 
we should say, whether it is simply the intellectual 
part of man that is addressed or the whole man, 
the moral part of him, the deepest thing in him, 
controlling and carrying along with it all the 
rest. Our Savior "planted for eternity;" He 
was Himself like the Sower in His parable, who 
"went forth to sow his seed;" He spoke words to 
the very idea of which it belongs that they can 
never "pass away." And, just because of this. 
He sowed or planted in man's moral nature; 
He addressed His words to his moral and spiritual 
being. This does not mean that in His teaching 
the intellect was in anywise disregarded; He 
spoke to man's moral nature, not as opposed to, 
but as comprehending and including, his intellect. 
As is hinted in the last sentence quoted above, 



The Imperishable Words of Christ. 195 

the rights of the intellect, though it was not 
primarily to it that they were spoken, will be 
found to be fully conserved in all our Savior *s 
words. It is because, while the intellectual does 
not include the moral, the moral, on the other 
hand, does in a profound sense include the in- 
tellectual; and every genuine word spoken to 
the moral nature of man will be found to be 
addressed to his intellect also. 

However, though thus of necessity indi- 
rectly addressing the intellect, it is character- 
istic of our Savior's teaching that He never 
spoke simply as a philosopher. For instance, as 
Dean Stanley somewhere points out. He gave 
us no philosophical definition of repentance; had 
He done so, it would have soon passed away, for 
philosophical terms and definitions soon lose 
their meaning. Instead, He gave us, what is 
better than any philosophical definition of 
repentance, the parable of the Prodigal Son; a 
thing taken from human life; addressed to the 
human heart; in which there is not a single cir- 
cumstance which change of time or place has 
any power to render antiquated. 

And this is true of all our Savior's words. 
They are addressed, not merely to the mind, but 
(the intellect not being excluded or disregarded) 
to the heart, the soul, the deepest thing in us, 
the immortal part of us. 

Another characteristic of our Savior's words, 



196 The Imperishable Words of Christ. 

and another reason why they cannot pass away, 
is found in something inherent in the words them- 
selves; in what may be called, for want of a better 
term, their tone. As they deal with eternal 
things, and as they are addressed to that in us 
which is eternal, so, it may be said they have the 
eternal tone. Far from being an insignificant 
matter, the tone of words may be said to be, in 
some respects, their most significant and char- 
acteristic quality. When the truth is spoken, 
on the highest subjects, and by one qualified to 
communicate it, it is known by a certain un- 
mistakable ring which it has. When utterance 
is at its highest and best, when moral and spirit- 
ual truth is finding expression through one divine- 
ly appointed, so to speak, for that purpose, a 
certain unequivocal tone is characteristic of the 
uttered words. It is a subtle and mysterious 
thing; men speak of it as the 'Hone of sincerity,'* 
or the ''accent of conviction.'* It is character- 
ictic of all the highest human utterance; how- 
much more of the words of Him who "spake 
as never man spake." This is what was felt 
in regard to our Savior's words when they were 
first spoken. It is written: "And it came to 
pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the 
people were astonished at His doctrine; for He 
taught them as one having authority, and not 
as the scribes." 

When we say that there is in our Savior's words, 



The Imperishable Words of Christ. 197 

corresponding to the eternal themes of which they 
speak, and the eternal part of man to Vv-hich they 
are addressed, a certain eternal tone, we are only 
saying that these words manifest, carried to its 
highest power, a peculiar and mysterious quality 
which has always been felt to belong to every 
genuine uttered word of truth. Great is the 
mystery of the spoken word. It is not a lifeless, 
but a living thing. There is in it a living soul; 
which abides there; which, in cases of the high- 
est utterance, does not depart from it even when 
the spoken becomes a written word. This is 
a truth which has often been felt and expressed 
in regard to the mysterious nature of words. 
Dr. J. W. Nevin, in the Mercershurg Review for 
January, 1871, says, upon this interesting and 
important subject: ''There is, indeed, a difference 
here also among written productions themselves, 
some having in them the po vver of life far beyond 
others. There are books, we know, in which 
the living spirit of the author is perpetuated, 
we cannot tell how, age after age. Such is the 
mysterious relation of word to life, where the 
word is itself, as first uttered, living and not dead ; 
it becomes, as it were, instinct with the spirit 
from which it proceeded in the beginning, so as 
to carry with it ever after the force of a felt 
personal presence. So it was most especially 
with the word of Him who was Himself the In- 
carnate Word of God, and of whom it is said 



198 The Imperishable Words of Christ, 

never man spake like Him. In Him speech 
became at once the embodiment of absolute 
truth itself, and what He spoke is felt to be of this 
character still as it has come down to us in the 
inspired pages of the New Testament. '^ This is 
the secret of the tone of our Savior's words. He 
Himself is in His utterances ; there is in them His 
"felt personal presence.'' 

Such would appear to be some of the reasons 
why the words of Christ can never pass away: 
they are about eternal things ; they are addressed 
to that in us which is eternal, and they have the 
eternal tone. 



XXI. 

A GREAT HY]\IN. 

One of the writer's recollections of his days 
in the Theological Seminary at Mercersburg is 
that of the somewhat rapid manner in which 
Dr. Schaff was accustomed to enter the lecture 
room in the morning, and, taking his place at 
the professor's desk, announce the hymn with 
the singing of which the duties of the day began. 
More frequently than any other, he would an- 
nounce the fifty-second hymn in the collection 
of hymns appended to the old Provisional Lit- 
urgy then in use in the institution. "Hymn 
Number 52"; we can still hear him saying 
those familiar words. Evidently this was Dr. 
Schaff's favorite hymn. He himself, writing of 
it, in his ''Christ in Song," says that it is "one 
of the most deeply evangelical and touching 
hymns in any language, the favorite of many 
Christians — e. gr., of Prince Albert in his dying 
hour. Faith in Christ as the only and all- 
sufficient Savior, has never found a more touch- 
ing expression. It is one of those classic lyrics 
which sink at once into the heart, and can never 
be forgotten. . . . We mention, as a curiosity, 
that even the 'Lyra Catholica' contains, along- 

199 



200 A Great Hymn. 

side of the hymns of the Romish Breviary and 
Missal, this hymn of Toplady, but gives it as a 
translation from the Latin, 'Jesus, pro me perfo- 
ratus.'^' The line just given is the first of a 
Latin translation of the hymn made in 1848, 
by Mr. Gladstone. 

The hymn, ''Rock of Ages," is, as every one 
knows, the production of Augustus Montague 
Toplady, a clergyman of the Church of England, 
and Vicar of Broadhambury in Devonshire, who 
was born in 1740 and died in 1778. He is the 
author of other well-known hymns, some of 
which are found in our hymn books, as, for 
example, ''Your harps, ye trembling saints;'' 
but he is best known by the one beautiful Ij^ic 
of which we are writing. This he, dying young, 
left behind as "an everlasting possession." The 
hymn is based upon, at least the noble title 
applied in the first line to our Saviour is taken 
from, Is. 26: 4: 'Trust ye in the Lord forever; 
for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength." 
The words 'zur olamim," here translated 'ever- 
lasting strength," signify, literally, 'rock of 
ages." In the Revised Version they are rendered 
'an everlasting rock." In the phrase ^' cleft for 
me," there is an evident reference to "the clefts 
of the rock," mentioned in Cant. 2: 14. Thus 
the hymn is deeply rooted in Scripture, especially 
in the imagery by which the Lord is so frequently 
represented as a Rock, and by which St. Paul 



A Great Hymn. 201 

says, ''That Rock was Christ." It is indeed like 
a stream of living water flowing from a cleft in 
the rock. 

How high this hymn stands in the honor and 
affection of Christian people is evident from the 
fact that when, a few years ago, a religious 
magazine, the ''Sunday at Home," took a ple- 
biscite of 3,500 of its readers on the question 
which were the best hymms in the language, the 
"Rock of Ages" was found to stand first in the 
list, having no fewer than 3,205 votes, only 
three other hymns having received more than 
3,000 votes. The writer from whom we learn 
this fact (Mr. W. T. Stead, writing on "Hymns 
That Have Helped," in "McClure's Magazine," 
for December, 1897), proceeds to say: "Toplady 
put much of his time and energy into the com- 
position of controversial pamphlets, on which the 
good man prided himself not a little. The dust 
lies thick upon these his works, nor is it likely to 
be disturbed now or in the future. But in a 
pause in the fray, just by the v/ay of filling up 
an interval in the firing of polemical broadsides, 
Augustus Montague Toplady thought he saw a 
way of launching an airy dart at a joint in Wes- 
ley's armor, on the subject of sanctification. 
So, without much ado, and without any knowl- 
edge that it was by this alone he was to render 
permanent service to mankind, he sent off to the 
* Gospel Magazine,' of 1776, the hymn, 'Rock of 



202 A Great Hymn. 

Ages/ To-day the world knows Toplady only 
as the writer of these four verses. All else that he 
labored over it has forgotten, and, indeed, does 
well to forget." 

It is well known that Toplady, an ardent ad- 
herent of Calvinism, was extensively engaged in 
controversy with the Arminians, and particularly 
with Wesley; and the controversy was very 
acrimonious, after the fashion of that day. We 
very much question, however, whether Mr. 
Stead is right in attributing to this hymn a con- 
troversial origin, in making it to have been 
"an airy dart" launched ''at a joint in Vv^esley^s 
armor." It is hard to believe this sweet hymn 
to have been in any proper sense a part of that 
bitter theological controversy. Evidently it had 
its origin in an entirely different spirit. On the 
other hand, Mr. Stead is probably perfectly right 
in saying that its author, in writing it, was un- 
conscious that it was by this alone that he was 
destined to be remembered, when all his labori- 
ous controversial pamphlets should be forgotten. 
It would seem to be characteristic of the greatest 
things that they are produced with a sort of 
divine spontaneousness and ease, without effort, 
unintentionally, and, as it were, unconsciously. 
This is no disparagement of the importance of 
human exertion. It is certain that no great thing 
is ever done except by one who knows what it 
is to "toil terribly." But the supreme hour in 



A Great Hymn. 203 

which he produces his greatest production is 
not likely to be one of terrible toiling; rather, 
it will be one of inspiration, vouchsafed to him 
from heaven as a reward for his previous honest, 
faithful, earthly toiling. It is Mr. Ruskin who 
says somewhere that no great thing is ever done 
with effort; for such a thing is done only by a 
great man, and he does it without effort. And 
the same writer says again: ''Is not the evidence 
of Ease on the very front of all the greatest 
works in existence? Do they not say plainly 
to us, not 'there has been a great effort here,' 
but Hhere has been a great power here?'" An 
immortal thing is never produced as the re- 
sult of a deliberate intention and effort to pro- 
duce an immortal thing ; it is more likely to come 
silently, secretly, stealthily, not by effort but by 
power. There is a "power not ourselves,'* 
which ''visits" us, if we be worthy of such a 
visit, and, using us as instruments, speaks and 
acts through us. In some auspicious moment 
a swift-winged angel comes upon us unawares, 
and, when he has passed, we find that he has left 
a gift behind him. When men pray to God to 
use them as "instruments," their words some- 
times mean more than they are conscious of. 
Sometimes there is a consciousness of being so 
used. The biographer of George Eliot writes: 
'She told me that, in all that she considered her 
best writing, there was a 'not herself,' which took 



204 A Great Hymn, 

possession of her, and that she felt her own per- 
sonality to be merely the instrument through 
which this spirit, as it w^ere, was acting." It was 
evidently on this principle that the ''Rock of 
Ages" was written. It was ''given by inspira- 
tion;" it came spontaneously, without effort, 
without any consciousness of the immortal thing 
that w^as being produced: it had no direct rela- 
tion to the laborious controversial pamphlets. 

It may be, as Mr. Stead says, that Toplady 
"prided himself not a little" on these same con- 
troversial writings. It is natural that men should 
set the highest value upon that which has cost 
them the most labor. It was, perhaps, for this 
reason that Milton preferred "Paradise Re- 
gained" to "Paradise Lost," and that Goethe, 
making light of himself as a poet, considered his 
claim to distinction to rest upon the fact that he 
had discovered, and in his " Farbenlehre " had 
expounded, the true theory of color. The sure 
judgment of posterity has not justified these and 
similar judgments of authors upon the relative 
value of their own productions. The thing upon 
which the most labor has been expended is by 
no means always found to be the thing most 
precious to humanity. Rather, especially among 
the poets, the case is often exactly the reverse. 
More than one poet's long and ambitious poems 
are now entirely forgotten, while he continues 
to live in the grateful memory of mankind by 



A Great Hymn. 205 

some simple lyric which, in some happy moment, 
came forth spontaneously from his heart. There 
are few now who have any knowledge of those 
extended poems of James Montgomery's, ''Green- 
land/' "The Pelican Island," and ''The World 
Before the Flood," but this poet's simple and 
beautiful hymn, "Forever with the Lord," 
coming evidently from the heart, went straight 
to the hearts of thousands of people, and is in 
all the hymn-books, and will probably be sung 
as long as the English language shall last. Of 
this principle, of the superiority of that which 
comes by inspiration over that which comes by 
effort, the hymn, "Rock of Ages" is an illustra- 
tion and instance. Toplady may have attached 
the greater importance to his controversial writ- 
ings. We do not know that he did so, but, if 
he did, he was mistaken. There is no appeal 
from the judgment which has doomed these, with 
all their labor, to oblivion, and destined the 
hymn, with all its spontaneousness, to immor- 
tality. The relation between the two reveals 
also the superiority of the spirit of poetry to the 
spirit of controversy. It is of the nature of 
polemics to be transitory; it is of the nature 
of poetry to endure. Controversy, useful and 
necessary as it may be, is for a day; but a poem 
may be for all time. 

And this is what this hymn is, and what its 
strength and enduring power largely consists in • 



206 A Great Hymn. 

it is (what cannot be said of ail so-called hymns) 
true poetry. There is a wide difference between 
versified religion and religious poetry, between 
religious sentiments expressing themselves in 
the form of verse, and poetry giving utterance 
to religious sentiments. Religion is one thing, 
and poetry is another; but both of them are 
essentially of a lofty and ethereal character; 
and they are capable of being united together in 
wedlock; and, when they do so coalesce, the 
result is always something of a specially exalted 
quality. In a hymn these two ought to coalesce ; 
a hymn ought to be poetry; there is nothing too 
good or too high for the expression of our feelings 
of admiration and reverence, of affection, confi- 
dence and love toward Him who 'Moved us and 
gave Himself for us." Now the hymn, "Rock 
of Ages," is one of the most perfect instances 
of this coalescence. In it piety and poetry are 
blended and fused together. In it we see the 
spirit of religion taking on the form of poetry, 
and the spirit of poetry taking on the form of 
religion, and dedicating itself to the expression 
of the highest religious sentiments. It is not 
always, as we have intimated, that a hymn is 
likewise poetry; but this particular hymn is also 
a genuine lyric poem. According to the famous 
maxim of Joubert, which has been pronounced 
"one of the truest of all dicta on poetry," "the 
lyre is a winged instrument and must transport." 



A Great Hymn, 207 

Our hymn fulfills this definition of lyric poetry; 
it has wings, it soars, and it transports. And 
this, without a doubt, is one of the secret reasons 
of its excellence and its enduring power. 

But perhaps the chief characteristic of the 
hymn, and the principal reason of its greatness, 
may justly be considered to lie in another sort 
of coalescence of which it is a conspicuous illus- 
tration; we mean the coalescence of thought and 
feeling. We have said that the hymn is scrip- 
tural; it may be said, with equal truth, that it 
is doctrinal. Certain great, characteristic doc- 
trines of the Christian religion are contained in 
it. It is intensely theological; it is hardly too 
much to say that there is theology in every line. 
But the characteristic and distinguishing thing 
is, not the doctrinal element as such, but the 
peculiar form or combination under which it 
here appears. The hymn is doctrine, but doc- 
trine with a difference; it is doctrine transfigured 
and glorified, warmed and animated by feeling; 
it is doctrine that has taken wings to itself, and 
soars and sings. The hymn is theology, but 
theology with a difference; it is theology that has 
found what it means and what it is for; it is 
theology that glows and burns with the secret 
fire of a sacred passion. Something high and 
rare is sure to be the result whenever there is a 
concurrence of those two great forces of thought 
and feeling. Thought is one thing and feeling 



208 A Great Hymn. 

is another; but the two are capable of being 
fused together; and something of this fusion 
seems to be characteristic of all the greatest^ 
highest, most enduring utterances. It is not 
good for either logic or passion to ''be alone." 
Som.e one has said of the orations of the greatest 
of the Greek orators that they are ''logic on 
fire." Had they been logic alone, or fire alone, 
they would not have been immortal. It was of 
the oratory of Burke, we believe, that it was 
said that it was as if its "thought were all feeling 
and its feeling all thought." So perfect was the 
fusion which had taken place between the two. 
It is in such perfect concurrence that both thought 
and feeling come to their best estate. Then 
thought is quickened and warmed by feeling, 
and feeling is sustained and exalted by thought. 
When such a coalescence takes place in the 
highest regions and in relation to the highest 
objects of thought and feeling, something high 
and extraordinary is sure to be produced. 
"Rock of Ages" is an instance of almost perfect 
coalescence of this kind. In the moment when 
it came from the head and heart of its author, 
thought and feeling, doctrine and devotion, the- 
ology and passion, were wedded together; and 
the result was a great and immortal hymn. 



XXII. 

THE PREACHER AND HIS CONGRE- 
GATION. 

Perhaps it is not without a feeling of sadness, 
for the most part, that the average minister 
stands up to preach to the average congregation. 
The contrast is so pitifully discouraging between 
the actual congregation which confronts his eyes 
and the ideal congregation which rises before 
his imagination. He is not going to preach to 
"a crowded house;" indeed, he has never done 
so, nor does he expect ever to do so. The con- 
gregation may have sung ''We'll Crowd Thy 
Gates with Thankful Songs," but there was no 
actual crowding. No, there is no great multitude 
ot worshipers and hearers now present; the aisles 
are not ''blocked;" it has not been found neces- 
sary to display placards announcing "standing 
room only;" it cannot be said that "hundreds" 
have been "turned away without finding en- 
trance." No ; on the contrary, there is a pathetic 
abundance of unoccupied space in the church 
as the average minister rises on Sunday morn- 
ing, to speak to the average congregation. 

It is not just this, however, that produces his 
feeling of sadness. He knows and feels that it 

209 



210 The Preacher and His Congregation. 

is an inestimable privilege and an honor of which 
he is not worthy, to be permitted to preach the 
everlasting Gospel of Jesus Christ in any place, 
however obscure, and to any congregation, how- 
ever small. But he cannot help thinking of the 
vast multitudes for whom this Gospel was in- 
tended, but by whom the sound of it is never 
or almost never heard. This Gospel — is it not 
a thing for ''all nations;" were not ''all people" 
from the very beginning regarded as being in- 
cluded within its comprehensive scope? Where 
is the great and glorious Church of Jesus Christ, 
dealing with all nations ; holding great popula- 
tions in its strong and beneficent grip; wielding 
influence and power over "all classes and condi- 
tions of men;" gathering, not merely a handful 
of people here and there, but vast, multitudinous 
congregations of joyful worshipers? In the 
neighborhood of the church in which the averr 
age minister preaches, there are perhaps many 
hundreds of people who never cross the thresh- 
old of a church door. The thought of these is 
a burden to his heart and conscience; he feels 
himself personally responsible for their absence. 
More particularly, and with a still more poignant 
feeling, he thinks of those of his own members 
who are absent from the worshiping congrega- 
tion. Not of the aged, the infirm, the sick; his 
thoughts of them are peaceful and comforting 
thoughts; he knows that for the most part they 



The Preacher and His Congregation. 211 

would be glad to be here if they could; but of 
those who, though well and strong, aru careless 
and negligent church-members and only irregular 
and occasional attendants upon the services of 
God's house. And with still more painful feel- 
ings he thinks of those of his congregation (for 
there are such) who never come to church at all ; 
whose church-membership is a nominal and 
unreal thing ; whose very names, as he sees them 
on the church register, make the minister sad. 
Truly, dearly beloved reader, the average min- 
ister has no cause for self-congratulation vvhen 
he stands face to face with his Sunday congrega- 
tion. And sometimes he seems to hear a scoffing 
voice which says: ''Is this all? Is this handful 
all that thou hast gathered after so many years 
of toil and struggle? Verily, thou and thy 
preaching have nothing to boast of; thy life, 
indeed, seems to have been, in no considerable 
degree, productive of results." 

Consolations are never wanting. Sometimes 
the minister casts aside his sorrowful thoughts; 
he turns upon the scoffing voice; he "strikes 
back." Why, he asks, should we be forever 
putting the hackneyed question, why the people 
do not go to church; why should we not rather 
inquire why there are so many who do? Is it 
not, after all, a remarkable fact that great mul- 
titudes of people do regularly frequent the ser- 
vices of God's house and the preaching of God's 



212 The Preacher and His Congregation. 

Word, and, with invincible obstinacy, persist in 
doing so, Sunday after Sunday, year in and year 
out, from generation to generation? Is it not a 
significant circumstance that, in the one hundred 
and twenty-five years during which men have 
worshiped in this particular church, no appoint- 
ment for service was ever made at which a con- 
gregation was not present? At least, the writer 
can bear personal testimony to the fact that this 
has been the case for more than one-fourth of 
this long period of time; and he is perfectly cer- 
tain that the same is true of the remainder of it. 
Surely this is a circumstance worthy of consid- 
eration. It leads one to inquire what, after all, 
is the source of the attractive power of the 
Church of Christ and the worship of God, and 
to believe that, after all, this power shall never 
fail. Thus, saddened by the ever present and 
ever saddening discrepancy between the ideal 
and the actual, oppressed with a sense of non- 
attainment and the consciousness of failure, 
the preacher of God^s Word seeks such consola- 
tion as it is possible for him to obtain. Grieving 
over the multitudes whom, though the Gospel 
was meant for them, he, nevertheless had no 
reason to expect to be present, and grieving 
still more over the absence of those whom he had 
a right to expect to be present, he takes refuge 
in the comforting thought of those faithful ones 
who, on this Sunday of somewhat unfavorable 



The Preacher and His Congregation. 213 

weather, have not failed, as they never do fail, 
to be present in their places. Through the 
open vestibule door he caught glimpses of them as 
they came in, and observed them shaking the 
xight snow from their garments. Who are these, 
whose animated and giowing countenances show 
the good effect of the open air exercise they have 
taken in coming to God's house? These, dear 
reader, are the ''regulars;" they are an unspeak- 
able comfort to the minister; seeing them, he 
thanks God and takes courage. If there are 
those whose very names, as he sees them on the 
church register, make him sad, there are those 
whose faces, as he sees them in church, never 
fail to make him glad. 

Sometimes a sort of pride comes to the preach- 
er's help; a poor and lowly sort of pride, but an 
innocent and harmless one, and one \vhich may 
well be considered permissible, seeing it serves a 
useful and beneficent purpose. There are times 
when he is sustained by the proud consciousness 
of duty performed under difficulties, of im- 
portant services rendered, however they may be 
slightly regarded. Happy is he if, on some 
dreary February Sunday, he is able to say to 
himself: ''The weather is unfavorable; the wor- 
shipers are few; I am preaching to a small con- 
gregation to-day. But, thank God, this sermon 
was not slighted. It is the fruit of conscientious 
and painstaking toil. It has been as industrious- 



214 The Preacher and His Congregation. 

ly and faithfully prepared, and will be as freely 
and lovingly given, as if thousands were present to 
hear it. " It is a great moment when the preacher 
can solace himself with this proud conscious- 
ness. Or, he has to deal, as sometimes happens, 
with an inattentive hearer The man is in 
church, but is there, as it were, unwillingly. He 
has had no joy in the worship; he is not disposed, 
to listen to the sermon. His countenance and 
his partly averted attitude betoken that he is 
bored and indifferent, that he ''cares for none 
of these things.^' Such a hearer is a great trial 
to a preacher; happy is he at that monent if he 
is able to say: ''0, my inattentive friend, would 
that you might be willing to listen to the inter- 
pretation which is being given of this passage of 
Scripture, into the meaning of which I have been 
digging as men dig for gold or precious stones. 
Believe me, the words which are now being spoken 
are, not for my sake, but for the sake of the truth, 
worthy of your respetful and interested attention. 
If any one, thirty years ago, had explained to me 
these words of Scripture as they are now being 
explained, he would have rendered me a great 
service; perhaps, if you were willing to listen, a 
great service might be rendered you." Some- 
times, — not always, but sometimes — the preach- 
er is able thus proudly to defend himself against 
the disparaging and offensive attitude of the 
inattentive hearer. 



The Preacher and His Congregation. 215 

But why should we speak of inattentive hear- 
ers? Why should we not rather speak of those 
whose sympathetic and attentive attitude is a 
constant joy to the preacher's heart? As Dr. 
Broadus once said: ''The soul of a man who can 
speak effectively to bis fellowmen is a Yery sen- 
sitive thing. It is easily hindered; it is also 
easily helped." How the soul of the preacher 
sometimes rejoices to find one specially attentive 
and susceptible hearer. What communion and 
companionship are then established; what swift 
and mysterious communications then take 
place between soul and soul. Longfellow writes 
in his journal: ''There is one law-student who 
comes in occasionally to my class, and I always 
lecture better when he is there. This shows how 
much depends upon the audience." Every 
preacher will understand this. Very probably 
he knows of some one regular and faithful hearer 
because of whom he always "preaches better." 
This person helps the preacher more than he 
knows. And the preacher is grateful to him for 
his attention, his sympathy, his help; in a meas- 
ure leans and depends upon him; and misses him 
sadly when his place is made vacant by death. 

Thanks for all attentive hearers; yea, blessings 
be upon all who come to God's house and par- 
ticipate in the worship of it, whether they be 
attentive listeners to the preacher or not. What 
ever may have brought them to church, and what- 



216 The Preacher and His Congregation. 

ever may be their wandering thoughts while 
there, may they carry a blessing with them 
when they go away. To the preacher his congre- 
ation is an object of infinite interest and import- 
ance. These are his people; they belong to him 
and he belongs to them. He knows them. He 
has been with them in times of joy and in times 
of sorrow. He knows something of their indiv- 
idual anxieties and perplexities, trials and strug- 
gles, sorrows and troubles. And this knowledge 
of them, and sense of identification with them, 
gives. him at times flashes of insight into the deep 
and mysterious meaning of human life, and pro- 
duce for him moments of a strange tenderness 
and exaltation of spirit. We remember once to 
have caught a glimpse, far back in the congre- 
gation, of the face of a young person, into whose 
life there had prematurely come the shadow of 
a great trouble. It was years ago, but we shall 
not forget that Sunday, that moment, that face. 
The infinite sadness and tenderness of it, in 
one so young ! When we saw that face with 
its look of sadness and sorrow combined with 
the expression of a sweet and gentle patience, 
our thoughts were faraway; and we remembered 
what is said of the face of Stephen: '^And all 
that sat in the council, looking steadfastly on 
him, saw his face, as if it had been the face of an 
angel.'' There are moments when some swift 
vision is vouchsafed unto us into the deep, deep 



The Preacher and His Congregation, 217 

meaning of human life, with its '^ eternal note of 
sadness, '' into the infinite significance and dazzling 
splendor of the Cross of Christ on which the 
Man of Sorrows died. Yes, even the preacher 
has '^ moments;" thanks for them; he u^ould 
probably perish except for them. 

"There are some moments in this lone 
And desolate world of ours that well repay 
The toil of struggling through it, and atone 

For many a long, sad night and weary day. 
They come upon the soul like som.e wild strain 
Of distant music, — whence, we know not." 

The service is over ; the hymns have been sung, 
the lessons have been read ; the prayers have been 
offered; the sermon has been preached. The 
people are departing; may they ^'go in peace." 
The parson turns away, repeating to himself 
Arthur Hugh Clough's ^'Say not the struggle 
naught availeth." And he says over to himself, 
also, these words of the same poet: 

"Let us go hence, and think on these things 
In silence, which is best." 



XXIII. 
PASSION IN PREACHING. 

Dr. Watson, enumerating in one of the chap- 
ters of ''The Cure of Souls" the several canons 
of public speaking, gives the last and highest 
place to what he calls Intensity. The passage 
is as follows: 

"The last and greatest canon of speaking is intensity, 
and it will be freely granted that the want of present day- 
preaching is spiritual passion. Of intellectual and social 
passion there is enough in the pulpit, and one has even 
been amazed at the most strange of all enthusiasms, 
critical passion, when a preacher has become quite hot 
over the authorship of the Pentateuch. What is wanted, 
and what cannot be wanted, is the sense of the unseen 
and eternal — of the everlasting love of God, the atoning 
sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, the unspeakable value 
of a single soul, the infinite pathos of human life, the 
tenderness of the Holy Ghost, and the graciousness of 
the Evangel." 

The reader of the volume will be in no danger 
of supposing that this passage implies any dis- 
paragement of theology. For, in the next chap- 
ter but one, on "The Theory of Religion," the 
author gives to theology its proper and deservedly 
high place. He shows the necessity, the inev- 
itableness of it, and affirms that ''no one can 

218 



Passion in Preaching. 219 

hope to teach religion, in even its simplest form, 
with permanent success, without a competent 
knowledge of theology, any more than a physician 
can practice medicine without a knowledge of 
physiology, or an engineer build a bridge who 
has not learned mathematics." He speaks in 
strong language, saying: ''One can hardly imagine 
a greater sin against light within the Church 
than any indifference or enmity tov/ards theology. ' ' 
He disputes ''the impudent assertion that an 
average audience has no interest in theology,'^ 
citing in evidence against it the fact that four 
of the books of fiction which within recent years 
have been most widely read, namely, John 
Inglesant, The Story of an African Farm, John 
Ward, Preacher, and Robert Elsmere, have dealt 
directly with theological questions ; and the further 
fact that four books, not of fiction, which have 
recently appealed widely and powerfully to 
the intelligent reading public, namely, Mr. 
Balfour's Foundations of Belief, Mr. Pearson's 
Natural Life and Character, Mr. Kidd's Social 
Evolution, and Professor Drummond's Ascent 
of Man, have all of them had collateral connec- 
tion with the problems of theology. There is 
something exhilarating, strengthening and 
reassuring in the manner in which Dr. Watson 
puts honor upon theology, as also in his sane and 
just discussion of the place which theology is 
likely to hold (in correction of certain mistakes 
of the past) in the Church of the future. 



220 Passion in Preaching. 

Unquestionably, theology, as it always has 
had, will alwaj'-s continue to have, much to do 
with the preaching of the gospel. The great 
doctrines of Christianity, built up with so much 
thought and care, will never cease to play a 
prominent part in it. What a goodly and whole- 
some thing is instruction in regard to the matters 
pertaining to God and the soul, and how welcome 
it is, always and everyT\^here, to the average man. 
What strength and steadiness, what substance 
and solidity, which otherwise it could not have, 
are imparted to the preaching of the man who 
practically recognizes the importance of theology. 
The successful preacher w^ll have much to do 
with the indoctrination of his hearers; he will 
take pattern from the New Testament, which, 
as a rule, does not proceed to practical exhorta- 
tion until it has first laid down a basis of doctrine. 
He will be a diligent student of theology, and 
his preaching will be leavened with it. 

When all this has been said, however, w-^ are 
far from having said or implied that a knowledge 
of theology is the principal thing which a preach- 
er needs. The place of theology is indeed a high 
one, but it is not the highest ; it is one of the prin- 
cipal instruments used in preaching, — it is not itself 
the force which uses the instruments. Preach- 
ing needs to be leavened with theology, as has been 
said, but theology itself needs to be leavened 
with something else before it becomes capable 



Passion in Preaching. 221 

of fulfilling the object and purpose for which it 
is intended. In itself, indeed, it may even be 
said to be a poor and ineffectual thing, singularly 
unfitted to be the means by which the preacher 
accomplishes his object. For that object, it 
needs to be remembered, is always an intensely 
practical one. It is not so much to instruct, as 
(using instruction and other instruments besides) 
to stir, to move, to vitalize and energize, to 
empower and enable. The preacher, or any 
public speaker (unless he be a scientific lecturer) 
stands before his fellow-men, not for the mere 
purpose of communicating knowledge, but for the 
purpose of convincing them of and persuading 
them to accept and adopt and act upon the truth 
which he proclaims, breathing into them, in 
what measure may be possible, the breath of 
life, to inspire and enable them so to do. It has 
been said that the public speaker ought to be 
''an animal galvanic battery upon two legs." 
But in the man who merely communicates know- 
ledge, there is nothing of the galvanic battery. 
Theological knowledge, wedded to its proper 
mate, is capable of becoming one of the most 
beneficent of forces; unmated, it is destitute 
of motive power. It comes to its best estate, it 
enters into the kingdom, only when it enters 
into alliance with that element which Dr. Watson 
calls passion, using the word in its legitimate 
large and noble sense. 



222 Passion in Preaching. 

Head and heart, thought and feeling, logic and 
passion, — these are very different, but each needs 
the other, and each is at its best and highest 
only when wedded to the other. Thought is 
needed for light and guidance, passion for force 
and motive power. When the two coalesce, when 
the thought is all warmed by feeling and the 
feeling all illuminated by thought, it is in that 
hour that the highest activity of the human 
soul takes place, and its highest products are 
produced. Then, as was once said of a great 
public speaker, it is as if the thought were all 
feeling and the feeling all thought. This is 
that union which is indicated by Wordsworth, 
when he says, in The Prelude: 

** From Nature's overflowing soul 

I had received so much that all my thoughts 

Were steeped in feeling;" 

and when he says, in the same poem: 

"By reason built, or passion, which itself 
Is highest reason, in a soul sublime. " 

Especially where, as in the case of the public 
speaker or preacher, the object is, not simply to 
inform men, but to move them, passion is 
indispensably necessary. There, what Bacon 
calls ' ' intellectus sihi permissus/' the intellect 
left to itself alone, is a comparatively helpless 
thing. For purposes of motive power, there is 
a fatal inability in that which is exclusively in- 
tellectual. It is destitute of vitalizing energy, 



Passion in Preaching, 223 

the very thing which public speaking needs to 
possess. Edmund Burke, whose words we have 
just quoted, was a noble instance of that com- 
l)ination of thought and feeling, logic and passion, 
of which we have just spoken. Professor 
Woodrow Wilson, in a recent volume, in which 
he writes instructively and delightfully of Burke 
as the ''Interpreter of English Liberty," says 
of that great statesman: ''His powers are all 
of a piece; his heart is inextricably mixed up 
with his mind ; his opinions are immediatly trans- 
muted into convictions: he does not talk for 
distinction, because he does not use his mind 
for the intellectual pleasure of it, but because 
he also deeply feels what he thinks. " The same 
writer says of Burke's writings: "They are not 
purely intellectual productions; there is no page 
of abstract reasoning to be found in Burke. His 
mind works upon concrete objects, and he 
speaks always with a certain passion, as if his 
affections were involved." "As if his affections 
were involved," — those words, it seems to us, 
indicate the true source of the power of every 
really great speaker or writer. Some one has 
described the oratory of the greatest of Greek 
orators by saying that it is "logic on fire. " There 
is in those orations abundance of argument, but 
the characterizing and differentiating quality 
of the oratory lies, not in the logic, but in the 
circumstance that it is on fire. Wherever a 
man, speaking to his fellowmen, produces power- 



224 Passion in Preaching. 

ful and lasting effects upon them, passion, in some 
form, will be found always to be present. It may- 
be latent, it may and probably will be suppressed 
or partially suppressed, but it will be there. Of 
the preaching of the man whom Dean Stanley pro- 
nounced to be ''beyond question the greatest 
preacher of the nineteenth century," his bio- 
grapher says, ''There was a restrained passion 
in him which forced people to listen." 

In no other calling is there so much room, and 
so much need, for the union of thought and feel- 
ing, as in that of the preacher of the Gospel. 
Here is boundless room for argument, and here 
is boundless room for passion. It would seem to 
belong to the very idea of preaching that it 
should be characterized by a certain intensity 
or passionateness ; and Dr. Watson is probably 
right when he affirms that the greatest need of 
the preaching of the present day is that of 
spiritual passion. The things which the Christ- 
ian preacher believes and proclaims are of such 
a nature that they can hardly be believed and 
proclaimed, in any true sense of the words, 
otherwise than passionately. Belief in these 
things is, as we have recently tried to show, in 
its very nature passionate. And the preacher 
who can say " I believed, therefore have I spoken,' ' 
will of necessity speak intensely; he will speak 
"as if his affections were involved;" he will 
speak with the passionate accent of a passionate 
belief. 



XXIV 
^'LIBERTY" IN PREACHING. 

It was a Sunday morning in April; and the 
parson was in his place in church; and the latest 
comers of the assembling congregation were 
coming in and taking their places for the morning 
service. Then, suddenly, from the sycamore 
tree down in the churchyard, the red-bird, that 
seems to have chosen that particular tree as 
his favorite place of resort, began his song. It 
was a song which a whole congreagtion might 
well pause and hush themselves to listen to. Like 
Shelley's skylark, this bird poured forth his 

"full heart 
In profuse strains of unpremeditated art." 

Next to the sweetness and variety of the strain, 
what struck one most was the perfect abandon of 
it; its spontaneous and unconscious freedom and 
joyousness. There was no clog or fetter to it; 
no faltering of note or failure of power. The 
bird sang ''like an embodied joy whose race is 
just begun;" like some ''blithe spirit," that 
had never known languor, and to whom "shadow 
of annoyance" had never come near. It was 
perfect, full-throated, passionate, exultant 

225 



226 ^^ Liberty ^^ in Preaching. 

utterance. It \\'as a fit prelude and accompani- 
ment (for it continued for a while after the 
service began) to the worship of God's house. 
Somehow, it reminded the parson of St. John's 
words, '^I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day." 
And he could not help washing that it might be 
given to him, preaching the gospel in the church 
that day, to know something of the freedom and 
joyousness of expression with which the bird 
delivered his message, down in the church-yard 
there, swinging on the sycamore tree. 

Then the parson was led to think of freedom 
of utterance generally, and, in particular, of 
freedom of utterance in preaching. It is a thing 
greatly to be desired. St. Paul desired it for 
himself. Exhorting the Ephesians to pray 
always with all prayer and supplication for all 
saints, he adds: ''And for me, that utterance 
may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth 
boldly, to make known the mystery of the Gospel, 
for which I am an ambassador in bonds; that 
therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak. " 
It is a thing which has been well-known to, and 
greatly valued by, all the great preachers of the 
Gospel of Jesus Christ. There is a significant 
expression which one occasionally meets with in 
the biographies, journals or letters of the preach- 
ers of fifty or a hundred years ago. The preacher 
of those times would sometimes write down in 
his journal, "Had great liberty in preaching to- 



^'Liberty'' in Preaching. 227 

day." It is an expressive phrase. The lan- 
guage is perhaps antiquated and obsolete now; 
but the thing it stands for is a thing of to-day, and 
just as precious now as it was in any past gen- 
eration. One does not always have '' liberty '^ 
in preaching. For the most part, perhaps, the 
preacher is conscious of being more or less bound ; 
he feels himself to be ''an ambassador in bonds." 
He has a painful and mortifying sense of not 
attaining to adequate utterance; of a wall of 
separation between him and his hearers; of clogs 
impeding, of obstacles baffiing, the expression 
of what he wishes to express. But it is not always 
thus; there are occasions, there are moments, when 
he finds liberty. Sometimes in the course of 
his preaching, something happens; ''a bolt is 
shot back somewhere in the breast," clogs fall 
away, fetters are knocked off, obstacles disappear; 
suddenly it seems as if there had gone into effect 
some secret decree of absolution and emancipa- 
tion. Then, for the moment, he attains to 
something like adequate, full and free expression. 
Then Paul's desire is fulfilled for him, and ''utter- 
ance" is given him. Then, while the spell 
lasts, he feels what a glorious thing it is to preach 
to men the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And he 
can go home after the sermon is over, and write 
down in his journal (if he keeps one), "Had 
great liberty in preaching to-day. ". 

Probably it would be found, upon considera- 



228 '^ Liberty^' in Preaching. 

tion, that the times when a preacher enjoys most 
liberty in preaching are those when he has most 
diligently and most faithfully studied the subject 
of his sermon. Liberty goes hand in hand with 
labor; the indolent man shall know nothing of the 
pleasures of emancipation and freedom. "At the 
root of all ease/' writes George Macdonald, ''lies 
slow and, for long, profitless-seeming labor, as 
at the root of all grace lies strength. Ease is the 
lovely result of forgotten toil. '' Toil and drudg- 
ery perform their task and are forgotten; but 
they reappear, transformed and glorified, in 
ease, and grace, and freedom. If any one wishes 
to experience liberty in preaching, he must needs 
be a hard-working student. Let him study 
with the utmost diligence the text w^hich he has 
chosen; let him brood, with long-continued brood- 
ing, over the theme on which he is going to preach. 
In one sense, let him seek to become master of 
his subject, as men say; in another and a better 
sense, let him desire to be mastered by it (for 
the truth is greater than he), to be taken possess- 
ion of by it, to become simply the mouthpiece 
or voice by which the truth of God shall find 
utterance. He is a preacher ; let him magnify his 
office, and make large account of his sermon; 
giving it the right of way, so to speak, and deem- 
ing no pains too great to be taken in the prepar- 
ation of it. While engaged in preparing it, let 
him not scorn to live in it and for it, having it 



"Liberty" in Preaching. 229 

in his mind when he lies down at night and when 
he rises in the morning. Let him make friends 
with his Greek Testament ; let him be an exten- 
sive reader, reading all he can find on the subject 
he is going to discuss; let him be even more dil- 
igent in meditation than in reading; and let him 
gather, from every, legitimate quarter, illustra- 
tions of the truth he is intending to proclaim. 
The secret of many a bound, hampered, halting 
sermon, lies in imperfect preparation; and much 
of the secret of liberty in preaching lies in care- 
ful, painstaking, laborious study. 

It is saying the same thing, in a different form, 
to say that a preacher is likely to experience Uberty 
in preaching when he has in his possession abund- 
ance of material. Preaching is apt to be at its 
best when the preacher is giving to the people, 
not the whole but only a portion, of the result 
of his preparation. Often it is poverty that 
restricts and enslaves; it is abundance (so it be 
organized abundance) that enlarges and en- 
franchises. That preacher is little in danger of 
being hampered and hindered who, with cop- 
iousness of material, is speaking out of the fulness 
of his mind and heart. We heard a certain man 
speak of a sermon he had heard as a "rich'* 
sermon; we understood him to mean a sermon 
characterized by abundance. The preacher 
was not hampered by scarcity; there was in his 
sermon no 'Hhin-spreading,'' necessitated by 



230 ^^ Liberty" in Preaching. 

scantiness of material, no wearisome repetition, 
begotten by poverty of thought, but rather that 
rapid progress of ideas which is always desirable, 
but which is possible only where ideas are abun- 
dant. The preacher who has liberty in preaching 
is likely to be the one who is calmly conscious 
of possessing plentiful resources, of which he is 
bringing forth at the time only so much as seems 
to be necessary for the accomplishment of his 
object. Consider this man, who seems to be 
preaching with so much ease, freedom and power, 
what is the secret of it? It is not merely the thing 
which he is saying; it is also the great mass of 
unsaid things lying back of that. He draws his 
strength from a source unseen; he is fighting his 
battle with an Army of the Reserve behind him. 
All the time he has at his command other argu- 
ments and illustrations by which to impress the 
truth he is enforcing. There they are, ready 
to be called into action, if needed : only, they are 
not needed. It is this, in part, which explains 
his liberty in preaching. 

But diligence of preparation and abundance 
of material are not of themselves sufficient 
to explain this phenomenon. Liberty in preach- 
ing is, in large measure, a thing of the heart, as 
well as of the mind; nay, this is one of its chief 
distinguishing characteristics, that it is a thing 
of the heart. It is ''out of the abundance of 
the heart" that ''the mouth speaketh." He 



"Liberty'' in Preaching. 231 

who preaches with libertj'- will do so, not merely 
because his mind is full, but because his heart 
is moved. There will be feeling as well as 
thought, in his preaching. These two belong 
together; and when, in some high moment, in 
the preaching of the Gospel, they come together 
in swift wedlock, liberty is one of the fruits of 
that union. He who has liberty in preaching 
is one whose own heart has been stirred and 
thrilled by the beatuy and the glory of the mes- 
sage he is going to deliver. He has himself first 
been helped by the sermon which he intends for 
the helping of others. When he himself has 
first felt the thrilling power of the truth he is go- 
ing to proclaim; when, perhaps, tears have come 
to his eyes, as, sitting at his desk and study- 
ing his sermon, he has thought of those who, 
on the coming Lord's day, will be looking to 
him for some word of comfort, of hope, of help, 
amid the sadness, the sorrow, the struggles, of 
their lives; when he has felt the infinite pathos of 
human life and the infinite splendor of the Gospel 
of Him who died on Calvary; when not only 
ideas have been coursing through his mind, but 
emotions have been coursing through his breast — 
that is a sign that he will probably preach with 
some degree of liberty when the hour of preach- 
ing comes. 

After all, however, it must be admitted that 
there is something mysterious, inexplicable, 



232 ^' Liberty^' in Preaching, 

unaccountable, in this matter of liberty in preach- 
ing. It is a thing which comes when, and whence, 
and how, we know not. Sometimes, when it 
seems as if it might be expected, it does not come; 
sometimes, unlooked for, it is suddenly present. 
Its coming seems to be, like that of all great 
things, " in such an hour as ye think not. " There 
is a "povYer not ourselves '^ that visits and en- 
franchises us. It is the Spirit of God. He 
makes us free; ''where the Spirit of the Lord 
is, there is liberty.'' Liberty in preaching is 
not of ourselves; it comes as a special, divine 
gift and reward, after we have done our best. We 
toilsomely climb to the mountain-top; there the 
Lord meets us and clothes us with power. There 
is a deep, deep meaning in our Savior's words 
to His disciples: ''When they deliver you up, 
take no thought how or what ye shall speak; 
for it shall be given you in that same hour what 
ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but 
the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. V 



XXV. 
THE ACCENT OF CONVICTION. 

There is an Arabic proverb which says: "He 
who knows not, and knows not that he knows 
not, is a fool ; shun him. He who knows not and 
knows that he knows not, is simple; teach him. 
He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is 
asleep; wake him. He who knows, and knows 
that he knows, is wise; follow him." Happy is 
the man who has arrived at certainty ; who knows, 
and knows that he knows. He shall be like a 
house that is built upon a rock. He shall be 
stable, serene, secure. He shall be strong, and 
a source of strength to others. Men will listen 
to him and follow him ; for he will speak with the 
tone of certainty, with the accent of conviction. 

How we arrive at certainty is a question 
which we do not now care to discuss, except to 
say that, in regard to the highest and most con- 
cerning truths, it is evidently not by logic alone. 
Let all honor be done to logic, in its proper prov- 
ince; but that province is not without its charac- 
teristic and very extensive limitations. Great 
is the office of logic and argument; but let us 
not delude ourselves by imagining that it is 
their special office to give us certainty in regard 

233 



234 The Accent of Conviction. 

to those things of which, above all others, it 
behooves us to be certain. Indeed, their power 
to produce knowledge and certainty respecting 
the highest kinds of truths, must be admitted to 
be in a very extraordinary manner restricted. 
"Looking at the whole circle of things summoned 
before logic,'' writes one who was not ignorant 
of the place and the power of logic, and was him- 
self a master of it, **I do not find more than one 
single object taken in by logic entirely, and that 
is Euclid's Elements." The same writer says in 
the same connection: "If a truth must not be 
believed except demonstratable by logic, w^e had 
better go away without it altogether." So 
little dependent are we for our beliefs, and 
the certainty with which we hold them, in regard 
to the highest, that is, moral and spiritual truths, 
upon logic and its processes. However it may 
be in mathematics, in morals there is a surer and 
swifter method of arriving at certainty than that 
of logical demonstration. There is another 
certainty besides that which is mathematical. 
The soul has an eye of its own. Our moral and 
spiritual nature has a power of perceiving and 
recognizing truth, not less real than that of the 
intellect, w^ithin its sphere, of finding it out by 
logical reasoning. The highest truths are seen; 
the certainty with which we hold them is a 
certainty produced by vision. It is a certainty 
which no logical demonstration could give, nor 



The Accent of Conviction. 235 

any lack of logical demonstration take away; 
which it is certain no logic could ever overthrow — 
to do so would be as irrational^ absurd, impossible, 
as that the moon should overthrow the sun. In 
regard to the great, essential truths of religion, 
the man who kno^vs and knows that he knows, 
does so because he sees. He is a seer; he per- 
ceives and recognizes the truth; he is a man of 
insight and vision. And the certainty of his 
knowledge imparts to his utterances a certain 
characteristic tone, in which there is something 
subtle and indefinable, but which is unmis- 
takable whenever it occurs. And it is this tone, 
whatever it may be, that imparts power to the 
utterances of the teacher or preacher; that stirs 
and moves men; that causes them to listen; 
that disposes them to follow. 

There was something peculiar in the manner 
and tone of our Savior's preaching. He had an 
accent all His own. Men were irresistibly drawn 
to Him; they listened to Him; they ''heard Him 
gladly." It was not merely what He said; it was 
also, it was in a certain sense especially, the 
manner of his saying it. This is clearly indicated 
by St. Matthew, who says, at the close of the 
Sermon on the Mount: ''And it came to pass, 
when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people 
were astonished at His doctrine; for He taught 
them as one having authority, and not as the 
Scribes. " 



236 The Accent of Conviction. 

"Wliat was it ye went out to see, 
Ye silly folk of Galilee? 
The reed that in the wind doth shake? 
The weed that washes in the lake? 
The reeds that waver, the weeds that float? — 
A young man preaching in a boat. 

"What was it ye went out to hear 
By sea and land, from far and near? 
A teacher? Rather seek the feet 
Of those who sit in Moses' seat. 
Go humbly seek and bow to them 
Far off in great Jerusalem, 
From them that in her courts ye saw, 
Her perfect doctors of the law, 
What is it ye came here to note? — 
A young man preaching in a boat. 

"A prophet! Boys and women weak! 

Declare, or cease to rave; 
Whence is it He hath learned to speak? 

Say, who His doctrine gave? 
A prophet? Prophet wherefore He 

Of all in Israel's tribes? — 
He teacheth with authority, 

And not as do the scribes." 

Our Savior's preaching was unique, and is 
not to be compared to any other, and may not 
be given as an instance of the accent of conviction, 
being too much beyond that; yet it is interesting 
to observe the effect produced by the tone with 
which He taught. In the preaching of the Apos- 
tles we have, properly speaking, an illustration 
of what we mean by the accent of conviction. 
When they went forth to preach the Gospel of 



The Accent of Conviction. 237 

Jesus Christ, they went forth perfectly persuaded 
and convinced of the truth of the message they 
were to deliver. They were as men who knew, 
and knew that they knew. In regard to certain 
things, especially the thing on which all the rest 
depended and which carried all the rest along 
with it, they were certain with a certainty which 
no power could possibly take away from them. 
They were convinced, they had been convinced 
by '^many infallible proofs," that Jesus Christ 
was risen from the dead. They had seen Him; 
they had talked with him; they had eaten and 
drunk with Him. The Resurrection w^as the 
one thing of which, above all others, it behooved 
them to be certain; certain in regard to this, 
they were certain in regard to all the rest. For 
everything else had been staked upon this; this 
one thing was itself, in a certain sense, the Gospel 
of Christ. At first, indeed, it seems as if the 
office of the Apostles had been simply to pro- 
claim the fact of the Resurrection. It is said: 
'^Yfith great power gave the Apostles witness 
of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus." It is 
said of St. Paul at Athens that "he preached 
Jesus and the resurrection. " Not that their preach- 
ing consisted of nothing but the constant reit- 
eration of this fact; for it abounded in exhor- 
tations, appeals, arguments, interpretations of 
prophecy. But the resurrection was the sum 
and substance of it; that which imparted reality 



238 The Accent of Conviction. 

and vitality to all the rest; that which, being 
taken away, all the rest became hollow, unreal, 
spectral, vain. And when they preached it, 
they did so as men v/ho were absolutely certain 
of what they preached. Their words had a 
certain ringing tone in them ; they spoke with the 
unmistakable accent of conviction. 

St. Peter, on the day of Pentecost, said to his 
hearers : ''Ye men of Israel, hear these words : Jesus 
of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by 
miracles and wonders and signs which God did by 
Him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also 
know. Him, being delivered by the determinate 
counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken 
and by wicked hands have crucified and slain. 
Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the 
pains of death, because it was not possible that 
He should be holden of it." Again, after the 
healing of the lame man at the Beautiful Gate of 
the Temple: ''Ye rulers of the people and elders 
of Israel, if we this day be examined of the good 
deed done to the impotent man, by what means 
he is made whole, be it known unto you all, and 
to all the people of Israel, that by the name of 
Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, 
whom God hath raised from the dead, even by 
Him doth this man stand here before you whole. " 
Again, in instructing Cornelius: "Whom they 
slew and hanged on a tree. Him God raised up in 
the third day and showed Him openly; not to 



The Accent of Conviction. 239 

all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before 
of God, even to us who did eat and drink with 
Him after He rose from the dead.'' We cite 
these passages from the preaching of the Apostles, 
as instances and illustrations of the accent of con- 
viction. These men knew; they were certain; 
they spoke with the tone of a passionate belief; 
and it was this that made their preaching the 
characteristic thing it was, that gained them a 
hearing, that gave them power over the minds 
and hearts and lives of men. 

In some measure, this peculiar tone will be 
characteristic of all true preaching. The char- 
acteristic and influential thing in a man's preach- 
ing is found, not merely in what he says, but 
also in the manner in which he says it. The two 
belong together; the manner is essential as well 
as the matter; there are certain things which 
cannot even be said except with a certain accent. 
The great things of the Gospel of Jesus Christ 
cannot be spoken except as the Apostles spoke 
them, with the accent of conviction. When 
it is attempted to speak them otherwise, the 
very purpose of the speaking is defeated ; nay, there 
is no proper speaking at all. And there is no 
hearing; for men will not listen except to the 
man who speaks with the tone of conviction 
and certainty. It is largely the presence or 
absence of this that makes a preacher's preaching 
effective or ineffective. It is the accent that 



240 The Accent of Conviction. 

matters. The preacher is not one whose office 
is merely to instruct, though he has much to do 
with instruction. He does not preach merely 
for the purpose of conveying information, but, 
by means of information, instruction, argument, 
appeal, exhortation, and whatever other influences 
and forces may be available, to stir men and to 
wake them into action, to breathe into them the 
breath of life, as it were, that they may be able 
to believe and do the things they ought to believe 
and do. He is one who ''lays his mind on other 
men," and ''makes them think as he thinks and 
believe as he believes." No one can do this 
unless he speaks with the accent of conviction. 
This is the characteristic mark of the man who is 
capable of convincing and persuading his foUow- 
men. The accent of conviction invests with 
power; the accent of doubt, of hesitation, of in- 
investigation and speculation merely, disables, 
withers, blights. Belief is health, sanity, power. 
As weakness longs for strength, and sickness 
yearns for health, so men everywhere turn their 
ears and give their attention to the man who 
speaks with the accent of belief, of certainty, 
of conviction. To him they will listen ; him they 
will follow. "Give me of your beliefs," said 
Goethe; "I have doubts enough of my own." 

If it should be said that we are attributing too 
much importance to so secondary and insignificant 
a thing as manner, accent, tone, we would reply 



The Accent of Conviction. 241 

that these things are by no means so unimport- 
ant as to a superficial consideration they might 
appear. In a certain sense, a man's accent is the 
characteristic and significant thing about him. 
It is the expression and manifestation of the man 
himself, of his own character and life, of the 
deepest things that are in him. Manner, accord- 
ing to Sir James Mackintosh's definition, ''is 
the transpiration of character." It is by his 
accent that a man is known. The very life and 
character of the man get into his tone and man- 
ner. It is by this means that they communicate 
themselves to others. It is a great mystery 
which takes place when a man speaks with the 
accent of conviction. For this accent, instead 
of being an insignificant and trivial thing, is 
nothing else than the expression of the life of 
the man himself, and his act is nothing else than 
the pouring forth of the vitality and power of 
his own beliefs and convictions (incapable of 
being communicated otherwise) for the service 
and help of his fellowmen. 



XXVI. 
''MINE OWN PEOPLE.'^ 

In Mr. Justin McCarthy's ''History of Our 
Own Times" there is an interesting paragraph 
concerning the acceptance of office by Mr. John 
Bright in the new administration which Mr. 
Gladstone was called upon to form upon the 
retirement of Mr. Disraeli. After speaking of 
the remarkable strength of the government 
which Mr. Gladstone formed, and of the circum- 
stance that the one name upon its list, after that 
of the prime minister himself, which engaged 
the interest of the public, was that of Mr. Bright, 
Mr. McCarthy proceeds to say: 

"Speaking to his Birmingham constituents, on his re- 
election after accepting the office of the President of the 
Board of Trade, Mr. Bright referred to his new position 
in a few sentences of impressive and dignified eloquence. 
He had not sought office, he said; it had come to him. 
'I should have preferred to remain in the common rank 
of the simple citizenship in which heretofore I have lived. 
There is a charming story contained in a single verse of 
the Old Testament, which has often struck me as one of 
great beauty. Many of you will recollect that the prophet, 
in journeying to and fro, was very hospitably entertained 
by what is termed in the Bible a Shunammite woman. 
In return for the hospitality of his entertainment he wished 
to make her some amends, and he called her and asked 

242 



''Mine Own Peopled. 243 

her what there was that he should do for her. ''Shall I 
speak for thee to the king, or to the captain of the host?" 
And it has always appeared to me a great answer that the 
Shunammite woman returned. She said, 'I dwell among 
mine own people.' When the question was put to me 
whether I would step into the position in which now I 
find myself, the answer from my heart was the same, — I 
wish to dwell among my own people. ' It was impossible, 
however, that a ministry could now be formed without 
Mr. Bright 's name appearing in it." 

Nothing could be more characteristic of Mr. 
Bright than his quotation, on such an occasion, 
of this beautiful passage of Scripture; and noth- 
ing could better indicate the secret source of the 
simplicity and dignity, the strength and power, 
of his personality and character, than the spirit 
in which the quotation is made. In large meas- 
ure, this great statesman was what he was, and 
accomplished what he accomplished, because it 
was characteristic of him to abide among his 
own people, which he continued to do even 
when compelled, for the time being, to leave the 
rank of simple citizenship and accept political 
office. The same is true of every man who has 
been on a large scale a friend and helper of his 
fellowmen. He has been of his people ; has iden- 
tified himself with them; has loved them, and 
has had a passion for serving them. Every such 
man ''dwells among his own people, '* as the 
Shunammite woman expressed it; he ''rides on 
the same anchorage" with them, as it was ex- 



244 ^'Mine Own People J' 

pressed by a great Greek orator. To abide 
among one's own people, and to be unwilling to 
be separated from them; to consider their lot 
one's own lot and their cause one's own cause ; 
to be loyal to them, and faithfully to serve them 
— this is always one of the marks of the able 
and worthy man; and if influence and power, 
distinction and greatness are ever to come to a 
man, it is in this way and by this means that they 
will come. 

Every man has his place and his people. It 
is the part of wisdom for us to believe that the 
lot which God has given us is a good lot, and that 
the people to whom He has caused us to belong 
are a good people. Let us not vainly imagine 
that we are worthy of a better place; the prob- 
ability is, that the place, whatever it may be, 
is better than we deserve. At all events, the 
sign of our being prepared for a higher and 
better place will be our having fully and faith- 
fully developed the capabilities and used the 
opportunities of the place in which we now are. 
Ijet us not deceive ourselves by believing that 
we, being different and better, ought to belong to 
a better people. We are not better than our peo- 
ple. We are flesh of their flesh, and blood of their 
blood. The probability is that they are as good 
a people as can anywhere be found; and it is 
certain that they are the best people for us. 
So, laying aside all self-conceit, and scorning as 



''Mine Own People.'' 245 

infallible signs of weakness the impatience and 
petulance that are born of self-conceit, let us 
thankfully accept our place and our people. 
There is simplicity and dignity and modesty in 
abiding among one's own people. It is also the 
safe course for anyone to pursue. Snares beset 
the path of the man who leaves his place and 
cuts himself off from his people, but he is secure 
who abides among those with whom God in His 
providence has cast his lot. There is a proverb 
which says: ''Sit down in your own place, and 
no man can make you stand up." 

To abide among one's own people is not only 
an expression of modesty and a ground of secur- 
ity; it is a source of strength. In a certain sense, 
every man is what his people make him; the 
strong man is strong with the strength of his 
people. That is to say, no man can be great by 
himself alone, but only as he is identified with 
others and representative of them; only as he 
dwells among his own people. There is a German 
proverb which says: " Ein Mann ist kein Mann.'' 
Separation and singularity are fatal to greatness 
and power. If a man's thoughts are exclusively 
his own, if they are peculiar, exceptional, odd, 
by that token they are of slight significance and 
consequence. The great thought is not some 
novel conceit w^hich has occurred only to a 
single individual; it is a thought which many 
may have been in some sense thinking, which 



246 ''Mine Own People.'' 

has been dimly hovering before their minds, 
until at last some chosen one of their number 
has been able, in their name and in their behalf, 
to conceive it clearly and to grasp it powerfully. 
The great utterance is not the expression of any 
unusual experience, but the unusual expression 
of the common experience; and it bears this 
characteristic mark, that, when it is spoken, 
thousands of souls stand up, welcoming it and 
rejoicing because it is the thing which they were 
trying to say, but could not. The great action 
is not the action of any single or separate indi- 
vidual, but the action of a people, performed 
through some one of their number, divinely chosen 
and commissioned and qualified to act in their 
name and as their representative. The great 
thoughts are people-thoughts; the great words 
are people-words; the great actions are people- 
actions. Consider this law, thou who art 
dreaming of distinction and greatness, whilst 
thou art perhaps thinking lightly or scornfully 
of the plain and simple people among whom thy 
lot is cast. ^'Seekest thou great things for thy- 
self? Seek them not.'' Greatness never comes 
to him who seeks it. But know this, at least, 
that there is not the remotest possibility of dis- 
tinction and power and greatness crowning the 
life of any man who separates himself from the 
people he belongs to and refuses to dwell among 
them. 



*'Mine Own People.'' 247 

But the chief reason why it behooves a man 
to abide among his own people, lies not in what 
they may do for him, but in what he may do for 
them. To do it means not merely the possibility 
of greatness; it nieans the opportunity of ser- 
vice; indeed, what greatness is there apart from 
service? No people is ever really served except 
by one of their own number. No stranger can 
be their guide, their helper, their saviour. ''A 
stranger will they not follow, but will flee from 
him; for they know not the voice of strangers.'' 
It has been said that God has given to every 
people a prophet in that people's own language. 
What if it should fall to thy lot, O man, to be 
such a prophet to thy people? What if, in some 
high hour, on some mountain-top, amid black- 
ness and darkness and tempest, all thought of 
ease and pleasure and self-indulgence being for- 
gotten, God should speak to thee and say: ''Go, 
speak to this people, and be to them My prophet 
and interpreter?" Could any greater honor 
befall thee than that, to be sent forth as the 
servant of God and the servant of thy people? 
Such an experience may never come to thee; 
but be sure of this, that the man to whom it 
does come will be one who reverences and loves 
and abides among his own people. 

Quarrel not with thy people, however plain 
and homely, however raw and uncultivated they 
may be. Go not in quest of a people more agree- 



248 ^'Mine Oion People.'' 

able to thy taste, more educated and intelligent, 
more cultivated and refined, more wealthy, influ- 
ential and powerful. Such there are, and they 
are most worthy of respect; but for thee there 
is one fatal defect in them all — ^they are not 
thine own. What thou wantest is not a people 
who may serve thee, but a people whom thou 
mayest serve; and this is the people whom God 
has given thee. Be content and thankful ; abide 
among them and forsake them not. 

There is no people like one's own people, what- 
ever their imperfections and faults may be. 
Happy is he who, underneath all these faults, 
can clearly discern the noble capabilities which 
they may obscure indeed, but cannot annul. 
Woe to the man who forsakes his people because 
of theii: imperfections and faults; these are the 
very reasons why he should remain among them. 
There was once a man who had a people; and it 
was, when he came to it, a very unlovely people. 
It was crude, raw, undeveloped; was, in fact, a 
race of slaves, with all the faults of slaves. 
During all the forty years he lived and labored 
among them, this people is declared to have 
been a "stiff-necked" and "rebellious" people. 
But he, beholding the noble possibilities in this 
people, passionately clung to them, and cast in 
his lot with them, and lived and died among 
them, refusing to belong to any other people, 
choosing rather to suffer the affliction with them 



^'Mine Own People.'' 249 

than to possess the treasures of Egypt and to be 
called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. How 
ages of history have vindicated the wisdom of 
this man's choice! Beneficent consequences of 
world-wide significance followed, and are still 
following, his decision to dwell among his own 
people. 



XXVII. 
THE CHURCH'S REAL ATTRACTION. 

It is hardly possible to have a high opinion 
of the enterprise recently undertaken and ex- 
cuted by the editor of ^' The Ladies' Home Jour- 
nal/' in sending a young woman to a large num- 
ber of churches in New York, Brooklyn and 
Boston with the avowed purpose of finding out 
what sort of reception she would meet with. 
We have not seen the full report of Miss Laura 
A. Smith, by whom this commission was car- 
ried out, but receive our information through a 
summary of it, given by ''The Literary Digest." 
Miss Smith reports that she dressed herself ''in 
very plain clothes, and endeavored both by my 
dress and behavior to typify the average young 
woman, without means, who goes to a city to 
find a church home." She declares her purpose 
to have been, "first, to test the welcome given 
to the stranger in the average church, to see 
what is meant by the invitation, 'strangers cor- 
dially welcome;' and, second, to see how many 
of the clergymen or the members of the congre- 
gation would, after the services, speak a w^ord of 
encouragement or greeting to the stranger 
within their gates." As regards thirty-seven 

250 



The Churches Real Attraction. 251 

churches visited in New York and Brooklyn, 
Miss Smith reports as follows: ''In five churches 
thirteen members had spoken to me. In thirty- 
two churches I had been absolutely ignored by 
their members." Of twenty-four churches vis- 
ited in Boston, she reports that the pastor of 
one had sought her out and spoken to her. ''In 
four churches four members, two being ushers, 
had passed a friendly w^ord. As for the other 
nineteen churches, not a word from any one." 

It is hardly possible, as we have said, to enter- 
tain a high opinion of, or to place much confidence 
in, this experiment. The practice of putting on 
appearances, however innocent the object aimed 
at, the act of spying upon others in order to 
ascertain whether they are sincere in the pro- 
fessions they make, is hardly one in itself to be 
commended. Moreover, it may justly be con- 
tended, that the experiment involved no true 
test. The circumstance that, out of thirty- 
seven ministers of Christ in New York and Brook- 
lyn, only three spoke to the stranger, and out of 
nineteen in Boston only one, is by no means 
convincing proof that the stranger was not 
"cordially welcome." It may well be that the 
ministers criticized were at that very time 
busily engaged in speaking to strangers else- 
where. It may well be that the person sitting 
next to Miss Smith was a stranger, looking, like 
herself, for attention, possibly expecting Miss 



252 The Church's Real Attraction. 

Smith to speak to her. Even if neither minis- 
ters nor members had in a single instance spoken 
to or shaken hands with the visitor, the circum- 
stance could not be conclusive evidence of her 
not having been welcome. There is nothing to 
show that any one of those congregations in 
which Miss Smith received no attention may not, 
nevertheless, possess the true spirit of Christ. 
So little may any such test be depended upon 
for determining whether a congregation is of a 
Christian spirit or not. All that the experiment 
would seem to prove is that one who goes to 
church for the purpose of receiving attention is 
likely to be disappointed. The test would be 
a valid one only if the Church existed for the 
exercise of sociability. It is not surprising to 
find representatives of some of the churches 
mentioned by name in Miss Smith's report 
earnestly protesting against having their con- 
gregations judged by her standard. It is not 
surprising to find a secular newspaper remark- 
ing, in a paragraph on the subject, that Miss 
Smith seems to have mistaken a religious service 
for an afternoon tea. 

Nevertheless, the experiment might be pro- 
ductive of good if it should call attention to a 
false view of the nature of the Church of Christ, 
which is widely prevalent, and of which the inci- 
dent of which we are speaking is itself a conspicu- 
ous illustration. That sociability ought to be 



The Church's Real Attraction. 253 

one of the characteristics of a Christian congre- 
gation; that the members of it ought to love one 
another; that strangers ought to be welcome to 
its services, and that special attention oaght to 
be given to the matter of receiving them and 
making them feel at home — no one will deny. 
But that the Church is a mere social institution, 
existing for the exercise and practice of sociabil- 
ity; that it is of the nature of a club, the mem- 
bers and proprietors of which receive, and dis- 
pense hospitality to, invited guests; that it is 
natural and proper to go to church with the 
dominant expectation of receiving some sort of 
social attention or other pleasant entertainment; 
that it is legitimate and necessary for the church 
to seek to attract persons to its communion 
chiefly by holding out the inducements and at- 
tractions of such attention or entertainment — 
these things are as contrary as can well be to the 
true idea of the Church of Christ. The Church 
is an institution of divine origin, of spiritual 
character, existing, first of all, for spiritual pur- 
poses. In the New Testament it is known as 
the Body of Christ. It is equipped with power- 
ful spiritual forces, the Word, the ministry, the 
sacraments, intended for, adapted to and 
capable of accomplishing the satisfaction of the 
deepest needs of men's souls. Its symbol is the 
cross. Its call is, not to enjoyment, but to 
sacrifice and service. It has attractions of its 



254 The Churches Real Attraction, 

own, which, if boldly confided in, will prove, in 
the long run, to be as superior to those of the 
club as it is, in its origin and nature, exalted 
above that institution. It cannot give what 
the world gives, but, it can give something 
which the world cannot give. It cannot go the 
world's way, but, going its own way, it can say 
to it, using the words of its Master, *' Whither I 
go ye cannot come." It aims, not at pleasure, 
but at that righteousness, the hungering and 
thirsting after which is one of the deepest char- 
acteristics of man's soul. It offers "that peace 
which the world can neither give nor take away.", 
It is an evil day when the Church forgets or 
makes light of the difference, the peculiarity, the 
uniqueness of her constitution and character. 
In particular, it is an evil day when the Church, 
disregarding her own characteristic and power- 
ful attractions, enters into competition, as it 
were, with the world, and adopts and relies upon 
attractions not different in kind from those of 
earthly organizations and associations. It is 
a dangerous competition; it is one in which the 
world will always have the advantage. The 
attempt is a futile one, to make religion ''jolly.'' 
There is nothing ''jolly" in the Ten Command- 
ments; there is nothing amusing in the Sermon 
on the Mount; there is nothing of an earthly at- 
tractiveness in the "Man of sorrows and acquaint- 
ed with grief," in whom "there is no beauty that 



The Churches Real Attraction. 255 

we should desire him.'' The attractions of 
religion lie deep ; it offers, not entertainment and 
enjoyment to the surface of us, but satisfaction, 
peace and joy to the depths of us. It is a fatal 
mistake to lose confidence in these deep and 
mighty attractions, and, turning away from them, 
to rely upon and to use other and different at- 
tractions, which, however seeming to be more 
immediately effective, are sure in the end to 
prove misleading and injurious. Some years 
ago an earnest preacher, preaching upon this 
subject, said ''The moment the Church ceases to 
depend upon the power of the Holy Ghost, 
acting through the reverent administration of 
the sacraments, a spiritual and chastened wor- 
ship, and sane, evangelical, sober, earnest preach- 
ing, there is absolutely nothing which she may 
not logically call to her aid in drawing men into 
her fold. And there is enough in the character 
of many of our methods of administering the 
church to cause a thoughtful man to ask whether, 
if the present pace is maintained, the dawn of 
the coming century may not see our churches 
transformed into houses of amusement or clubs 
for physical comfort." 

To forget the reality and the peculiar and 
unique character of the Church of Jesus Christ, 
as an institution, and, so forgetting, to forsake 
its proper and characteristic attractions and 
substitute others in their stead, seems to be one 



256 The Churches Real Attraction. 

of the special dangers of Protestantism. In the 
"Outlook" of September 21st, in a very sensible 
editorial on the incident which has occasioned 
this communication, it is said: ''It is the weak- 
ness of American Protestantism that this club 
conception prevails among the Protestant 
churches of this country. No one would think 
of attempting to take the social temperature of 
Roman Catholic churches by applying to them 
a journalistic thermometer. In a Roman Catho- 
lic church no woman would expect personal at- 
tention unless she made her wants known to the 
priest, or to some one who would take her case 
to the priest. To the credit of the Roman 
Catholics be it said that they attend church 
services for the purpose of worshiping God. 
They do not expect to receive a welcome in 
church, any more than the user of a public library 
expects a welcome when he sits down to read." 
Once, in a large city, the writer had occasion 
to pass by a Roman Catholic church, in which, 
at the time, divine services were being held. 
Through the open door, at the farther end of 
the church, the lights burning at the altar, the 
symbols of the Christian religion were to be 
seen. The congregation was a vast one; it not 
only filled, but overflowed, the great church; 
many of the worshipers were kneeling (for at 
the moment the congregation was kneeling) 
on the bare steps and pavement outside the 



The Church's Real Attraction. 257 

building. To the writer it was an impressive 
and affecting sight. Here was a vast multitude 
of people, of all classes and conditions, engaged 
in the act of common worship. It is nothing 
to the present purpose to criticise that w^orship; 
the unquestionable fact remains that the inten- 
tion was that of worshiping. How many in that 
multitude had been lured to church with the 
promise, or had come with the expectation, of 
receiving attention? It is safe to say, not a single 
one. Here (even a Protestant may say this) 
was, not the club conception, but the Church con- 
ception, of the Church of Jesus Christ, as an in- 
stitution different, unique, ''not of this world. '^ 
The Church of Christ, in its proper character, is 
altogether unlike any earthly institution, organ- 
ization or association. It is not a place in which 
some are hosts to entertain, and others guests to 
be entertained. It is a place in which all to- 
gether and all alike, rich and poor, wise and 
ignorant, strong and weak, are guests of Him 
who is its only Master and Owner, to be min- 
istered unto by Him, in the great need of their 
poor souls. To him who sees the Church as it 
really is, and stands in proper relation to it, the 
house of God will be his Father's house, in which 
he is at home, ''an house of prayer for all people,^' 
through the worship and service of which he 
may enter into communion with his Maker and 
Redeemer. 



258 The Churches Real Attraction. 

While it is at all times proper to preach the 
gospel of gentleness, kindness, courtesy, to re- 
mind Christian people of the doctrine and duty 
of not being ''forgetful to entertain strangers/' 
and to bring in, from the streets and lanes, from 
the highways and hedges, the wandering and 
lost, to sit down as welcome guests at the feast 
of the gospel, certainly the present is not a time 
to emphasize a conception of the Church of 
Christ which has the effect of representing it 
as if it were an earthly institution with earthly 
inducements and attractions. That conception 
is already too prevalent in Protestantism, has 
already wrought much harm, and is capable of 
working more. Rather is it a time to revive, to 
emphasize, and to put honor upon that concep- 
tion of the one holy, catholic and apostolic 
Church of Christ, which prevailed from the be- 
ginning, and which Protestantism had originally 
no thought of abandoning. It is time to speak 
of, to put honor upon, to confide in, the proper 
and characteristic attractions of the Christian 
Church. He who holds this conception and 
feels the power of these attractions, is not likely 
to ''go to church" with the expectation of 
obtaining some personal recognition or atten- 
tion for himself. 

In the days when it was not unusual for 
Anglo-Saxons to be exposed for sale in the slave- 
market, an intending purchaser asked a slave, 



The Church's Real Attraction. 259 

"Will you be honest if I buy you?'' To whom 
the slave replied, ''Yes, whether you buy me or 
not." When one who knows the real nature, 
object and attraction of the Church of Jesus 
Christ is asked, ''Will you come to church if we 
show you attention?'' he will probably answer, 
"Yes, whether you show me attention or not." 



XXVIII. 
DIAMOND AND SEED. 

The emphatic word in the above title is the 
conjunction "and;'' for it corresponds to, was 
suggested by, and differs only in this single word 
from, the title of a very striking editorial which 
appeared some time ago in "The Outlook." 
The editorial in question, under the caption 
"Diamond or Seed?" maintained that Christi- 
anity is not a diamond, but a seed; that is, not 
a "finished product," but an "ever-growing 
life;" not a completed thing, to be handed down 
from generation to generation, to which nothing 
can be added and from which nothing can be 
taken away, which is, "in the twentieth century 
exactly what it was in the first century," but 
"a life which is to be developed in successive 
generations, growing with the growth of the 
world." The two conceptions are represented 
as opposite and contrary to each other, and the 
difference between them is declared to be 
"radical." Upon reading the title of this edi- 
torial, and perceiving the import of it, there 
instantly came into the writer's mind the words 
which stand at the head of this communication. 
True, he has been anticipated in the use of them; 

260 



Diamo7id and Seed. 261 

not long after the editorial appeared, this same 
expression was used as the heading of a brief 
criticism of it by one of ^'The Outlook's" sub- 
scribers. The writer had occasion to make use 
of the ancient saying, " Pereant qui ante nos 
nostra dixere!'' However, in view of the prior, 
original and independent occurrence of the 
expression to himself, the writer deems himself 
justly entitled to the use of it; and, considering 
that the subject was discussed only in the brief- 
est manner by the critic referred to, judges that 
he is not precluded from the expression of his 
views upon it. 

When the writer had finished reading '^The 
Outlook's" editorial, there occurred to his mind 
a certain striking saying which he remembered 
to have seen quoted by the same periodical a 
good many years ago, before it had exchanged 
the name of ''The Christian Union" for its 
present title. As nearly as we can remember, 
the saying was expressed in the following words: 
''Exigent minds say, 'This or that is true;' tol- 
erant minds say, 'This and that is true.'" In the 
realm of the truth, which is very comprehensive 
and vast, it is better to use, at least we are far 
more frequently called upon to use, the conjunc- 
tion "and" than the conjunction "or." Hence, 
he who says "this and that" is far less likely to 
fall into error than he who says "this or that." 
One of the chief characteristics of the truth is 



262 Diamond and Seed. 

its inclusiveness. Indeed, it is solely because it 
seems to overlook this characteristic, because it 
says "or" instead of ''and", that we have any 
fault to find with the editorial to which we are 
referring. With what that editorial says, posi- 
tively, namely, that Christianity is a seed, a 
living and growing thing, capable of and des- 
tined to continual and progressive develop- 
ment, it is impossible to disagree; Christianity 
would be nothing if it were not that. If the 
only difference between the seed theory and the 
diamond theory were that the one is that of a 
living and developing, and the other that of a 
non-living and non-developing Christianity, 
there would be no room whatever for any differ- 
ence of opinion. It is what the editorial says 
negatively, what it denies, that gives rise to 
objection. Affirming that Christianity is a seed, 
it denies that it is a diamond; it does not per- 
ceive that it may be at the same time both one 
and the other. In opposition to this view it 
may, we think, be justly affirmed that Christi- 
anity, essentially a living, growing and changing 
thing, is, under another aspect, a stable and 
unchanging thing; that, in a certain sense, it 
was given to the world as a diamond is given, 
that is, as "a finished product;" that, in a cer- 
tain sense, it is incapable of having anything 
added to it or subtracted from it; that, in a cer- 
tain sense, it is exactly the. same in the twentieth 
century that it was in the first. 



Diamond and Seed. 263 

That a thing should be at the same time both 
a diamond and a seed might well seem to be a 
contradiction; it is no contradiction, however, 
in the realm of truth, which is the native land of 
paradoxes. It is because of the vastness, the 
comprehensiveness, the many-sidedness of the 
truth itself. The kingdom of God is very large; 
it is capable of being represented and regarded 
under many different aspects. How manifold 
these aspects are may be seen in the multiplicity 
of images which our Saviour uses in His par- 
ables setting forth the nature of His kingdom. 
In one parable He compares that kingdom to 
a mustard seed, thereby giving His sanction to 
the seed theory; but in another He compares it 
to a pearl, thereby seeming to give His sanction 
to the diamond theory. The kingdom of God 
is both; it is a seed that lives, and grows, and 
passes through manifold changes ; it is also a pre- 
cious stone, a pearl, or a diamond, that is received, 
possessed and transmitted. This combination 
is one by no means unfamiliar to the Scriptures. 
The New Testament has much to say about 
precious stones, but always, in connection with 
Christ and His kingdom, they are living stones. 
St. Peter says of Christ: ''To whom coming, as 
unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, 
but chosen of God, and precious, ye, also, as lively 
stones, are built up a spiritual house." Christ 
is a stone, a precious stone, a living stone, preci- 



264 Diamond and Seed. 

ous, indeed, because living; and those who be- 
lieve in Him are likewise stones, but ''lively," 
that is, living, stones. Such is the paradox. 
By the same paradox, it may analogously be said 
that His kingdom is a stone, a precious stone, a 
living stone. It would seem to be by no means 
contrary to the Scriptures that the kingdom of 
Christ should be at once a living organism and 
a precious stone, at once a diamond and a seed. 
This one pregnant scriptural expression, ''liv- 
ing stone," seems to carry in itself the whole 
argument in favor of the comprehensive view 
for which we are contending. "Living" stands 
for seed; "stone" stands for diamond. They 
belong together; neither may exclude the other. 
There is another scriptural expression which 
seems to us to involve the rejected diamond 
theory. It is the phrase "once for all," as con- 
tained in the following passage: "By the which 
will we are sanctified through the offering of the 
body of Jesus Christ once for all." It may be 
that our interpretation is incorrect ; we are aware 
of the dispute as to the clause of the sentence 
to which this phrase is to be referred. However, 
the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, by his 
frequent use of the word "once," seems to lay 
stress upon the idea expressed by this phrase, 
upon the finished character, upon the finality and 
conclusiveness of what was done by Christ, It 
is said, "this He did once;" it is said that "He 



Diamond and Seed. 265 

entered in once into the holy place;'' that ''once 
in the end of the world hath He appeared to put 
away sin/' that He was '"'once offered to bear 
the sins of many." We are quoting these pass- 
ages, to which others might be added, in order to 
show the emphasis which the New Testament 
lays upon the truth that what was accomplished 
by Jesus Christ was accomplished ''once for all," 
that what he gave to the world was so given 
that nothing may, in any true sense of the word, 
be either added to it or subtracted from it. This 
is the question, whether the Christianity which 
Christ gave to the world, confessedly and unde- 
niably a living, growing, changing thing, is not, 
at the same time, a thing perfect from the be- 
ginning, and unchanging in the midst of all 
change. Being a seed, is it not also a diamond? 
That is, is it not a thing finished and complete 
at the time of its being given; is it not "the 
faith which was once delivered unto the saints;" 
is it not a precious inheritance, to be received, 
held and transmitted intact? The seed theory 
and the diamond theory belong together; they 
are not inconsistent with each other; the one we 
ought to hold and not to leave the other unheld. 
That these two are not inconsistent, that a 
thing may be at once a diamond and a seed, that 
a being destined to pass through various stages 
of development and change, may, nevertheless, 
be perfect and entire at the beginning of its ex- 



266 Diamond and Seed. 

istence, is sufficiently evident. There is nothing 
that lives and grows that does not come all at 
once; it is characteristic of all life that the end 
is already present in the beginning. The seed 
is given just as the diamond is given; it is per- 
fect; it lacks nothing. There is nothing in the 
developed tree that was not present in the seed 
from which it grew. When a human being comes 
into the world, it is on this same principle of 
coming all at once, of being perfect from the 
beginning. When a child is born, "a, man is 
born into the world"; the child is the man. All 
the members of his body, and all the faculties 
and powers of his mind and soul are present at 
the beginning of his existence. However long 
he may live, and whatever changes he may 
undergo, nothing will ever be added to him or 
subtracted from him. There will only be de- 
velopment or evolution of powers present from 
the start. When a Christian comes, it is on the 
same principle; he comes all at once; he comes 
by being ^'born again;" all that belongs to 
Christian life and character is in him from the 
first; the mysterious thing which was given to 
him, and by virtue of which he became a Chris- 
tian, was given to him ''once for all." All the 
possibilities of repentance, faith, hope and love 
are in him; indefinite growth and development 
there may be, but there is never, properly speak- 
ing, any addition. All things that live and grow 



Diamond and Seed. 267 

we say, come after this manner; they are given 
perfect, to begin with; if there were no other 
difference between the two than this, the seed 
may be said to be given not otherwise than the 
diamond. There is a sense, indeed, in which 
Christianity is a seed, and not a diamond. The 
diamond is an inorganic thing, and Christianity 
cannot be adequately represented by anything 
inorganic. This is the reason why, in one sense, 
Christianity is not a diamond; it is not, how- 
ever, because it is a finished thing, to begin 
with; not because it remains always the same; 
not because it is incapable of having anything 
added to it or subtracted from it. In these last 
mentioned respects Christianity, which all of us 
admit to be a seed, is, at the same time, unde- 
niably a diamond. 

A diamond and a seed; a thing finished, and 
yet unfinished; perfect, yet ever advancing to- 
ward perfection; changeless, yet constantly un- 
dergoing change; an inheritance, ''once deliv- 
ered" and yet perpetually being delivered — this 
is the paradox. We are here concerned simply 
with the statement of it, not with any attempted 
explanation of it or argument concerning it. It 
is the paradox of Him who is a ''living stone," 
and whose people are "living stones," and whose 
religion is at once a diamond and a seed. 



XXIX. 
''THE CAPTAIN OF MY SOUL." 

The recent death of William Ernest Henley has 
been the occasion of considerable comment upon 
the personality and literary activity of that well- 
known English poet and essayist. He is thought 
by many to have been "sl significant force in 
modern English literature. '' The New York Even- 
ing Post speaks of him as ''perhaps the most typ- 
ical man of letters of the generation now passing 
out of middle age." The same paper says that 
he "was always an apostle of the unconventional 
and the excessive." The Springfield Republican 
says that "he always commanded attention by his 
positiveness, which sometimes attained the point 
of truculence; but his judgments were erratic, 
and his prejudices were bitter and ineradicable." 
We observe that all the notices which we have 
seen make mention of one particular poem of 
hiS; the poem by which he has hitherto been chiefly 
or almost exclusively known to the more general 
public, and which, in the opinion of some of the 
critics, is the only one of his poetical productions 
which posterity will probably care to preserve. It 
is the poem beginning, "Out of the Night that 
Covers Me." As it is with this alone that this 

268 



''The Captain of My SouV. 269 

communication is concerned, and as the poem is 
in itself a significant, characteristic and striking- 
production, we take the liberty of reproducing it 
here entire: 

"Out of the night that covers me, 
Black as the Pit from pole to pole, 

I thank whatever gods there be 
For my unconquerable soul. 

"In the fell clutch of circumstance 
I have not winced nor cried aloud; 

Under the bludgeonings of chance 
My head is bloody, but unbowed, 

"Beyond this place of wrath and tears 
Looms but the Horror of the shade, 

And yet the menace of the years 
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. 

"It matters not how strait the gate. 
How charged with punishments the scroll, 

I am the master of my fate; 
I am the captain of my soul. " 

This poem may be regarded as in a measure 
illustrating and verifying the already quoted 
judgments upon its author and his productions. 
It ''commands attention"; it is characterized by 
positiveness, unconventionality, excess. No one 
can read it without feeling the power of the thrill- 
ing note which it contains. It is an instance of 
''sincere personal expression." It is a genuine 
utterance of its author's soul, and has in it some- 
thing of that vivid and vibrating quality which 



270 ''The Captain of My SouV 

is found in all such utterances, whatever form they 
may assume. It is a militant Declaration of Inde- 
pendence. It is a passionate, pagan protest against 
the domination and despotism of Circumstance. 
It is an indignant repudiation of the belittling 
and disabling belief that we are, simply and ex- 
clusively, what our environment makes us. The 
poet passionately affirms that he is the master, 
and not the victim, of his fate. Pagan-like, he 
gives thanks to "whatever gods there be" for 
his ''unconquerable soul." ''Man's unconquerable 
mind" is a phrase we remember to have seen 
somewhere in Wordsworth. Perhaps it was this 
phrase of Wordsworth's that became the germ 
of the poem of which we are writing. 

Whatever of significance this poem may possess, 
and whatever impression it may have made upon 
the minds of its readers, must evidently be attrib- 
uted to its being a particularly vivid and striking 
expression of a great truth. It takes the ancient 
maxim, "Quisque suae fortunae faher/^ "Every 
one is the artificer of his own fortune," and ful- 
fils in respect to it the office of poetry by breath- 
ing into it the breath of life, by filling it with 
human interest and human passion. It is the 
office of poetry to take that which is common 
and show that it is not comlKon; to give wings 
to that which has no wings, fire to that which 
has no fire, life to that which has no life. The poem 
of which we are writing is a fine instance of the 



''The Captain of My SouV 271 

poetical, as distinguished from the philosophical, 
expression of truth; it puts into the maxim we 
have quoted a fire and a force which no one has 
has ever found in it in its philosophical form. 
This maxim, we have said, expresses a great truth; 
it would be more correct to say, one side of a 
great truth. For truth, for the most part, is made 
up of two opposites, and is found in the concur- 
rence of these. A great truth generally has its 
"sides,'* and these have each its time and place to 
be remembered and emphasized. Under one set 
of circumstances, and with reference to a certain 
class of persons, it is one side of the truth, 
under certain conditions it is another, that needs 
to be brought forward and insisted upon. It 
is hardly too much to say that what is true at 
one time, and with reference to certain persons 
and circumstances, ceases to be true when the 
time, circumstances and persons are changed. 
This is not because the truth varies, but because 
it has sides. 

There are truths which need now to be remem- 
bered, and now to be forgotten; to be insisted 
upon at one time, and held in abeyance at another. 
Charles James Fox, with respect to the doctrine 
of resistance to governments, expressed the wish 
that it "might never be forgotten by kings nor 
remembered by subjects.'' And John Stuart Mill, 
quoting this saying of Fox's, with reference to 
his own wish to disbelieve the doctrine of 



272 ''The Captain of My SouV 

the formation of character by circumstances, 
remarks that ''it would be a blessing if the doc- 
trine of necessity could be believed by all quoad 
the character of others, and disbelieved in regard 
to their own." We remember that Carlyle ex- 
presses exactly the same sentiment in words 
which seem to us so luminous, just and discrimi- 
nating, that we may be permitted to quote them 
here : '' It is a great truth, one side of a great truth, 
that the Man makes the Circumstances, and, 
spiritually as well as economically, is the artificer 
of his own fortune. But there is another side 
of the same truth; that the man's circumstances 
ar^ the element he is appointed to live in 
and work in; that he by necessity takes his com- 
plexion, vesture, embodiment, from these, and 
is, in all practical manifestations, modified by 
them almost without limit; so that, in another no 
less genuine sense, it can be said that the Circum- 
stances make the Man. Now, if it continually 
behooves us to insist on the former truth toward 
ourselves, it equally behooves us to bear in mind 
the latter when we judge of other men." 

So, then, the truth that a man is the master 
and not the victim of his circumstances, is one 
the wisdom and salutariness of insisting upon 
which depend upon whether he is speaking of 
himself or of others. In the poem we are consider- 
ing, the poet is speaking of and judging himself. 
Let him, therefore, affirm and insist upon this 



''The Captain of My SouVi 273 

particular side of the great, twofold truth. To 
do so will probably do him no harm; may do 
him much good. Let him boast of his ''uncon- 
querable soul;" of his head, ''bloody, but un- 
bowed;" of being "unafraid;" of being "master 
of his fate." It is the vivid and passionate 
utterance of this defiant and triumphant spirit, 
in the face of adverse circumstances, that imparts 
to the poem its characteristic, thrilling note. 

It is one thing, however, to say that one is 
the master of his fate, and another thing 
to say that he is the captain of his soul. 
A man's lot is one thing, his soul, another. Indeed, 
it can hardly be considered possible, in any proper 
sense, for a man to speak, as the poet here does, 
of his soul as something separable from himself, 
as something which he possesses and of which 
he may be the master. True, it is common to 
speak of man as having a soul, but this must 
be regarded as an inadequate and improper form 
of speech. It would be more correct to say, 
"Man has a body; he is a soul.' ' Properly speak- 
ing, the soul is not something which a man has; 
it is that which he is. The relation of a man to his 
soul is of such a nature as to preclude the possi- 
bility of his being the captain of it; if it is to 
have a captain it must of necessity be some 
other than himself. We would not be captious 
in our criticism; on the contrary, we would 
gladly acknowledge — we have already acknowl- 



274 ''The Captain of My SouV[ 

edged — what there is of truth in this vehement 
declaration of the soul's mastery over circum- 
stance. We would simply point out another and 
still greater truth, which it does not express; 
nay, which it seems to overlook or deny; and 
yet at the same time to suggest by the expressive 
and suggestive phrase which it uses, ''the cap- 
tain of my soul." 

For every soul must have its captain, must 
belong to, and follow, and serve, some master. 
"No man can serve two masters;'' but every 
man must, and practically does, serve one. It 
is not service that degrades, but service unlaw- 
fully exacted and rendered, bondage to an il- 
legitimate master, who has no sovereign claim 
to our allegiance. The service of the true and 
legitimate master enlarges, enfranchises, en- 
nobles. To belong, to serve, is the constitu- 
tional and inevitable destiny of every human 
soul. To belong to and serve its proper Lord 
and Master is its characteristic strength and 
glory. This is weakness, to be the captain 
of one's own soul; this is strength, to have 
found, and to follow, the soul's true Captain. 
When we are strong, it is with a strength not our 
own ; when we conquer, it is because our Captain 
conquers for us, and in us, and throughus. There 
is a sufficiency, indeed, but ''our sufficiency is not 
of ourselves." It may perhaps be well, under 
certain circumstances, to boast of one's "un- 



''The Captain of My Soul.". 275 

conquerable soul;'' of not having -'winced nor 
cried aloud," "in the fell clutch of circumstance,", 
of being "unafraid" in the presence of the horror 
of the shade;" of being "master of one's fate;" 
nay (for we may concede a certain degree of al- 
lowance to the phrase), even of being "the cap- 
tain of one's soul." But there is something high- 
er, because more human than this. It is, to 
boast of the unconquerable Captain of our souls; 
of having winced and cried aloud in the clutch 
of circumstances too much for us, but not too 
much for Him; of having been afraid when 
passing through the Horror of the Shade, and 
yet not afraid, because of His being with us 
there. How strangely the language of this portion 
of the poem reminds us of the language of a certain 
portion of the twenty-third Psalm: "Though I 
walk through the valley of the shadow of death, 
I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me." The 
author of those words would not have ventured 
to call himself the captain of his own soul. 

One cannot but feel that the boasting of this 
poem is based upon an insufficient experience 
and a superficial estimate of the evils, the miseries, 
the horrors, to which man's earthly life is liable. 
Its author has been in the clutch of circumstance, 
but not of the worst circumstance. He has never 
been where the disciples were when they cried, 
"Master, save us, we perish!" "They that 
go down to the sea in ships, that do business in 



276 ''The Captain of My SouV 

great waters; these see the works of the Lord, and 
His wonders in the deep. For He commandeth, 
and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up 
the waves thereof. They mount up to the heavens, 
they go down again to the depths; their soul is 
melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro 
and stagger like a drunken man, and are at 
at their wit's end. Then they cry unto the Lord 
in their trouble, and He bringeth them out of 
their distresses.'' It is not merely the picture 
of a storm at sea; it is a representation of the 
vicissitudes and storms of human life. They who 
live this life deeply, who ''go down to the sea 
in ships and do business in great waters," have 
such experiences as shatter all their confidence in 
their own sufficiency. ''Circumstances" are too 
much for them. Disappointment and sorrow 
and trouble prove to be evils too great for a 
spirit of stoical indifference to cope with. Above 
all, the accusations of a guilty conscience, the 
horror and misery of sin, the awful power of 
death — ^these are the things which cause them 
to reel to and fro and to stagger like drunken 
men, and, repudiating the doctrine that they 
are the captains of their own souls, to call on 
the name of the great Captain of their salvation, 
who alone is able to deliver and save them. 

Who is the Captain of our souls? None other 
than He who made the heavens and the earth 
and all that in them is; who is the maker of our 



''The Captain of My Soui:\ 277 

bodies and the father of our spirits, and ''know- 
eth our frame;" who holds us and our circum- 
stances in the hollow of His hand; who for us 
men and for our salvation came down from 
heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost 
of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. He 
who wrestled with sin and death, and over- 
came them forever; He who died on the cross 
and rose the third day from the dead — He is 
"the Captain of my soul." 



XXX. 
''THE GREAT COMPANION." 

It is somewhat curious that this beautiful 
title should have been given to God by one who 
had come to doubt or deny His existence. Whether 
original with him we know not, but the first 
time we remember to have seen it was in 
Professor Clifford's often-quoted saying, "We 
have seen the sun shine out of an empty heaven 
to light a soulless earth; we have felt with utter 
loneliness that the Great Companion is dead.'' 
It is a sentence which mournfully expresses an 
agnostic's sense of that impoverishment and 
desolation of spirit which is the natural and 
legitimate result of his agnostic belief. He has 
been robbed by the very process which was intend- 
ed to be, and seemed to be, one of enrichment. 
He has gained knowledge, but lost faith — a poor 
exchange. He has been left alone with 
emptiness, soullessness, death. Men seek to 
find out God solely by intellectual means and 
scientific methods, and discover that God is not 
thus to be found; they attempt (to use Bacon's 
phrase) to "soar into the secrets of the Deity 
on the waxen wings of the understanding," 
and meet with the disaster in which every such 

278 



''The Great Companion,'* 279 

attempt must end; and then they announce 
that they have not found God; nay, that God 
is not to be found; nay, that God does not exist. 
We need not at all be disquieted by these agnostic 
announcements. We are not at all disturbed 
when the blind man informs us that the sun has 
ceased to shine; we simply look at the sun in the 
heavens, shining there in his glory, and quietly 
go about our affairs. We may well, however, 
admire the beautiful manner, beautiful in its 
sadness and mournfulness, in which this partic- 
ular agnostic announces the final departure from 
himself and his companions of the heavenly 
vision. '^ Blessings brighten as they take their 
flight." When he proclaims the fact that God 
is no more, his words have in them a great tender- 
ness and sadness, expressive of the sense of an 
infinite loss; he calls God by a beautiful name; 
he speaks of Him as 'Hhe Great Companion.'' 
God is indeed the Great Companion of all 
those who believe in Him, and love and obey 
Him. In a certain sense, the title expresses what 
God is for in His relation to men; He is for com- 
panionship, and all that companionship implies 
and stands for. ''Fear not, for I am wth thee,'' 
is a great, characteristic saying of God's , constant- 
ly recurring throughout the entire Old Testa- 
ment history. This is what He was accustomed 
to say to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob. When 
Jacob went forth from his father's house, and, 



280 ''The Great Companion." 

in a desert place, far from any human dwelling, 
lay down for the night with a stone for his pillow, 
God was with him there, and spoke to him, and 
said, "I am with thee, and will keep thee in all 
places whither thou goest.'^ The scene is typical 
of all human loneliness, and of that divine com- 
panionship which no extremity of loneliness can 
ever take away. "Certainly I will be with thee,'^ 
the Lord said to Moses when He sent him forth to 
perform the great task to which He had appointed 
him. He said the same to Joshua when his turn 
came: "Be strong and of a good courage, for thou 
shalt bring the children of Israel into the land 
which I sware unto them ; and I will be with thee. " 
The preposition "with" is a great and mighty 
word in the Bible. "Thou art with me" is a char- 
acteristic and constantly recurring utterance of 
the Psalmist. "Though I walk through the valley 
of the shadow of death I will fear no evil; for 
Thou art with me." God's promise to be with 
His people, especially in every time of need and 
trial, is in one sense the principal and all-com- 
prehending promise of the Old Testament. As 
it is written in Isaiah: "Fear not, for I have 
redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name ; 
thou art mine. When thou passest through the 
the waters I will be w^ith thee; and through the 
rivers, they shall not overflow thee." 

Thus it is in the Old Testament. When we come 
to the New Testament we find no change but 



''The Great Companion:' 281 

that of progress, intensification, completion. 
Our Lord Jesus Christ came ^'to fulfil;" He has 
brought to pass the fulfilment and realization 
of the idea of God as the Great Companion. He 
is Immanuel — God with us. What is the sig- 
nificance of His incarnation and life on earth; 
of His sufferings, death, resurrection and ascen- 
sion, and of the coming of the Holy Ghost, except 
that thereby God in Him, removing all obstacles 
out of the way, was establishing and bringing 
to perfection that communication, companionship, 
union, between God and man, which belongs to 
the very idea of His relation to His creatures? 
The thought of this companionship and oneness 
finds constant expression in our Savior's dis- 
courses to His disciples. He is at once their great 
Master and their Great Companion; He is to be 
with them and they with Him. Especially is this 
the case as regards His last utterances, ''I will 
not leave you comfortless; I will come to you. 
Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; 
but ye see Me." ''If a man love me, he will keep 
My words, and My Father will love him, and 
We will come to him, and make our abode with 
him." ''And ye now therefore have sorrow; 
but I will see you again, and your heart shall 
rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.'^ 
"Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast 
given Me, be with Me where I am." It is signifi- 
cant that this expression, of "being with," occurs 



282 ''The Great Companion.'' 

in the very' last words spoken by our Saviour to 
to His disciples before His ascension; these last 
words were: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto 
the end of the world.'' Thus does the end coin- 
cide with the beginning ; it is simply the expansion 
and fulfilment, the perfection and glorification of 
the promise originally made to Abraham, Isaac 
and Jacob. It is significant, also, that St. Paul 
having spoken of the end and consummation of all 
things, the coming of Christ and the resurrection 
of the last day, suddenly stops short and includes 
all that he might have been expected to say of 
heaven in the simple words, "And so shall we 
ever be with the I^ord." That is heaven, to ''be 
with Christ;'' there is nothing more to be said 
than that. In a certain sense, our whole relation 
to Christ, here and hereafter, and the whole 
substance of our religion is summed up in this, 
that He is our great, almight}^, ever-present, 
immortal Companion. 

How great and deep a need of our nature is 
thus satisfied, we may be assisted in understand- 
ing by reflecting upon the essential and inevitable 
loneliness of all human lives. Very precious is 
human companionship, but it is in its very 
nature superficial, imperfect, inadequate. Dear 
to the heart beyond all other earthly things is 
human sympathy, but confessedly it is only ''in 
part," and can never be more. Human sym- 
pathy and human companionship reach but a 



"The Great Companion.'' 283 

little way ; in the depths of every heart there is a 
great sense of loneliness and a great longing 
for that perfect companionship, of which, in 
its actual surroundings and associations, it 
finds approximations and suggestions indeed, 
but which itself it can never find in them. 
However it may be as regards the smaller 
and less significant occasions and experiences 
of human life, in all its solemn and momentous 
crises, we are alone. Critical times and seasons, 
days of fate and doom, there are in every life; 
and, when we go forth to meet them, we go un- 
attended; no one can be with us there. There is 
something awful in the thought of the loneliness 
of the soul in all its supreme hours. This is true, 
especially, of the great and final hour of death. ''I 
shall die alone," said Pascal. But it is true also 
in a measure, of all those hours, which, because 
of the momentousness and finality with which 
they are charged, bear a resemblance to that of 
death. Nay, in a certain sense, it is true of one's 
entire life. No one can at any time find in his fel- 
low-man that perfect and absolute companionship 
which is born of perfect and absolute sympathy. 
**The heart knoweth his own bitterness." We 
not only die alone; we also live alone. It is this 
sense of human loneliness, and the consequent 
need of the divine companionship, that Keble 
expresses in his beautiful poem for the twenty- 
fourth Sunday after Trinity, having reference. 



284 ''The Great Companion:' 

in the beginning of it, to the saying of Pascal's 
which we have just quoted: 

"Why should we faint and fear to live alone, 
Since all alone, so Heaven has willed, we die, 
Nor even the tenderest heart, and next our own, 
Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh?" 

Perhaps none of the poets has given more per- 
fect expression to the human sense of isolation and 
loneliness, and the human longing for communi- 
cation and companionship than Matthew Arnold. 
Sometimes,being in the mood to do so, in a brief 
interval of leisure, after the performance of some 
duty, we take up and read from the volume 
containing the strange, sad poetry of this well- 
known critic and man of letters. If we quote from 
his prose or poetry, as we have occasionally done, 
it is not (as one of our correspondents once 
seemed to infer) because we accept his theologi- 
cal and religious views — we are far from doing 
so; it is rather because he occasionally makes 
vivid and striking affirmation of certain great 
and everlasting truths; because he now and 
then gives almost perfect expression to certain 
deep and universal human experiences. It is 
thus that Matthew Arnold sings of the human 
isolation : 

"Yes! in the sea of life enisled, 

With echoing straits between us thrown, 
Dotting the shoreless watery wild. 
We mortal millions live alone. 



"TAe Great Companion.^* 285 

The islands feel the enclasping flow, 
And then their endless bounds they know. 

"But when the moon their hollows lights, 
And they are swept by balms of spring. 
And in their glens, on starry nights, 

The nightingales divinely sing; 
And lovely notes from shore to shore, 
Across the sounds and channels pour: — 

"Oh! then a longing like despair 

Is to their farthest caverns sent; 

For surely once, they feel, we were 
Parts of a single continent! 

Now round us spreads the watery plain; 

Oh, might our marges meet again! 

"Who ordered that their longing's fire 

Should be, as soon as kindled, cooled? 
Who renders vain their deep desire? — 

A God, a God their severance ruled! 
And bade betwixt their shores to be 
The unplumbed, salt, estranging sea." 

There are few, perhaps, who have not, on some 
occasion in their lives, mourned over "the 
unplumbed, salt, estranging sea," which separates 
soul from soul, and dooms every human 
life to be lived by itself alone. Thanlcs for 
all human companionship as far as it goes. But 
there are boundaries which it cannot pass; there 
are regions which it does not reach; there are 
experiences with reference to which many a 
soul may say, with the Ancient Mariner: 



286 ''The Great Companion:' 

"■ O Wedding-Guest! this soiil hath been 

Alone, on a wide, wide sea: 
So lonely 'twas, that God Himself 

Scarce seemM there to be. " 

It is this deep sense of human isolation and 
loneliness, this profound and unutterable longing 
for perfect sympathy and companionship, that 
God, in the person of His Son Jesus Christ, satis- 
fies when He comes to us as the Great Companion. 
In satisfying this one need He satisfies all the 
needs of our nature; for these are all summed up 
and comprehended in the one great need of union 
and communion with Him. This, His power of 
companionship, was purchased by Him at "a 
great price." He could not be the Great Companion 
without first having had experience of the Great 
Loneliness. He was alone that we might not be 
alone. How much of the long-continued passion 
of His life on earth was made up of the loneli- 
ness of it! And how^muchof the narrower and 
intenser passion which marked the close of His 
earthly life consisted of His being ''left alone." 
How awful are those words, spoken to His disci- 
ples just before His betrayal: ''Behold, the hour 
Cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scat- 
tered every man to his own and shall leave Me 
alone." Then, indeed, was He left alone when 
one of His disciples betrayed Him, and another 
denied Him, and all forsook Him. But later He 
experienced a still more awful sense of desertion 



''The Great Companion:' 287 

and desolation; in the hour when, on the cross, 
He exclaimed, ''My God, my God, why hast Thou 
forsaken Me?" This was the deepest depth of 
His unutterable passion; it was then that He 
passed through the region where God Himself 
scarce seemed to be; it was then that He tasted 
the last drop in the cup of human loneliness and 
desolation of spirit. He was not alone, indeed; 
He never was deserted of the Father; it was 
always as He Himself said more than once, ''And 
yet I am not alone, because the Father is with 
Me." Yet this undoubted fact does not make 
any less real or perfect His human consciousness 
of being utterly forsaken and alone. And it is 
this, His perfect experience of utter and absolute 
loneliness, that has made Him the Great Com- 
panion. 

Whatever the agnostic may say, the Great 
Companion is not dead. The crucified and risen 
Christ lives forever. There is no boundary 
that He cannot cross; there is no region of our 
lives that He does not reach ; there is no promon- 
tory of human experience so lonely and so far 
beyond the confines of human companionship 
and help that He does not stand there with us. 
And, when we shall pass through the valley of 
the shadow of death, we shall fear no evil, for 
He, the Great Companion, will be with us there. 



XXXI. 
THE DIVIDING OF THE SPOILS. 

''To the victor belong the spoils." This is a 
maxim which, because of the use which has been 
made of it in the partisan politics of our country, 
has become odious, and is seldom uttered except 
to be rejected. And yet, in itself considered, it 
is the expression of a great and glorious truth. 

This is not saying that there is anything great 
or glorious in ''spoils," or in the conspicuous part 
which they have borne in connection with wars 
of conquest. On the contrary, one of the most 
painful and distressing sights consequent upon 
such a war must have been the spoils which the 
conqueror brought home with him. When a 
Roman general came back from a successful 
campaign of conquest, and a triumphal proces- 
sion was granted in his honor, the spoils taken 
from the enemy always formed a prominent 
feature of the spectacle which ensued. In that 
procession were sometimes led captive kings and 
queens, princes and princesses; there were seen, 
following the conqueror's chariot, troops of 
beautiful boys and girls, from Gaul, from Ger- 
many, from Britain, from Syria; these were 
among the spoils. There were especially ex- 

288 



The Dividing of the Spoils. 289 

hibited the arms taken on the field of battle by 
the victorious general from the general whom 
he had vanquished; these were the spolia opima, 
of which one reads so much in the history of 
Roman triumphal processions. There were car- 
ried the choicest treasures of the kingdom which 
had been conquered; treasures of gold, silver, 
precious stones, costly vessels and rich apparel. 
The ancient kingdom of Antiochus, or of Attains, 
or of Mithridates, or some other powerful and 
wealthy kingdom of the East, had been plun- 
dered, and these were the spoils taken from it. 

These spoils were, to call them by their proper 
name, nothing but plunder ; and there must have 
been something very sad and distressing in the 
sight of these precious things taken by force 
from their lawful owners. From the beginning 
there have not been wanting, among the con- 
querors themselves, those who perceived their 
true character, and revolted from them, and 
would have nothing to do with them. When 
Abraham returned with his confederates from 
the war against the four kings, and there was 
much spoil, and the king of Sodom said to him, 
''Give me the persons, and take the goods to 
thyself," Abraham said, ''I have lifted up my 
hand unto the Lord, the most high God, the 
possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not 
take from a thread even to a shoe-latchet.'* 
When England was conquered by William the 



290 The Dividing of the Spoils. 

Norman, in 1066, there was universal spoliation; 
all England became ''spoils" to his invading 
and conquering army. Vast domains, castles, 
villages, whole cities, were distributed among 
the knights and barons who had followed him, 
while the simple vassals had smaller portions. 
All, even those who had been ignoble grooms in 
Normandy, found themselves enriched. Men 
whom the old annalists call the ''base scum of 
armies," "v/ent mad with pride and astonish- 
ment at beholding themselves so powerful, at 
having servants richer than their own fathers 
had ever been," In the long run, the Norman 
Conquest proved to be a blessing to England, 
but her spoliation by the Normans must have 
been a pitiable sight. There was only one 
among William's knights who laid no claim to 
lands, or treasure, or other reward for his ser- 
vices; who, like Abraham, refused to have any- 
thing to do with the spoils of the conquest. "He 
said that he had accompanied his lord to Eng- 
land because such was his duty, but that stolen 
goods had no attraction for him, and that he 
would return to Normandy and enjoy his own 
heritage, a moderate but legitimate heritage, and, 
contented with his own lot, would rob no one." 
This man's name was Guilbert Fitz Richard, a 
name which, because of his high-minded scorn 
of spoils, it does one good to remember, more 
than eight hundred years afterwards. 



The Dividing of the Spoils. 291 

Such; for the most part, has been the character 
of those spoils which from the earliest times 
have been a characteristic feature of all wars of 
conquest; they have been, simply, '^ stolen 
goods." There are, however, spoils which are 
legitimate; which are capable of being regarded 
with joy and pride; which consist not of stolen, 
but of recovered, goods ; which are composed, not 
of men enslaved, but of men set free. There is 
no spoiler like our Lord Jesus Christ. It had 
been predicted of Him that he should be such. 
It had been said by Isaiah, '' Therefore will I 
divide him a portion with the great, and he shall 
divide the spoil with the strong." The same 
prophet had said: ''Thus saith the Lord, even 
the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, 
and the prey of the terrible shall be delivered, 
for I will contend with him that contendeth 
with thee; and I will save thy children." Our 
Lord "contended;" He took away the ''cap- 
tives of the mighty;" He delivered the "prey of 
the terrible;" He "divided the spoil." Never 
was there such a war of conquest as that which 
was waged by Him; never were there such 
spoils as those which were won by Him. 

How remarkable are those words in which our 
Saviour Himself described Himself as a spoiler 
of the enemy: "When a strong man armed 
keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace; but 
when a stronger than he shall come upon him, 



292 The Dividing of the Spoils. 

and overcome him, he taketh from him all his 
armor wherein he trusted, and divideth his 
spoils." The '^ strong man armed" is Satan, 
''the prince of this world," as our Savior calls 
him. His ''palace," or stronghold, which he 
keeps and holds as an army holds a fortress, is 
this present world; and his goods or armor, 
wherein he trusts, are the sons of men, taken 
captive and held by him ; these are the arms and 
tools without which he would be powerless. 
Or, according to another view, not inconsistent 
with this, the stronghold is the soul of man, and 
the armor is that soul's capabilities and powers, 
intellectual, emotional, volitional, capable of 
being used by Satan for his own purposes; 
capable also of being used for purposes the 
highest and most heavenly. The stronger than 
the strong is our Lord Jesus Christ. When we 
consider His incarnation, when we contemplate 
His coming down from heaven to earth, we be- 
hold Him going forth to make war upon the 
"strong man armed." When we contemplate 
His passion and death, we behold Him struggling 
with and overcoming the strong man in his 
stronghold. And, when we contemplate His 
resurrection, we are the witnesses of His vic- 
tory; we behold Him taking the strong man's 
armor from him and dividing his spoils. The 
greatest act of spoliation the world has ever 
seen took place when Jesus Christ rose from the 



The Dividing of the Spoils. 293 

dead. Then the strong man armed was stripped 
of his armor; then the captives of the mighty 
were taken away; then the prey of the terrible 
was delivered; then the spoils were divided. 
He is the victor and to Him belong the spoils. 

How glorious are the spoils of Christ; spoils 
which no one ever regarded, or could regard, 
with scorn; spoils which never caused a tear, 
except of joy. In His triumphal procession, 
how many captives have marched rejoicing; 
what brilliant gifts, capabilities and powers 
have come to their highest and best estate by 
being taken as spoils by Christ, and used and 
spent in His service. From the beginning, from 
the time when He, by His resurrection, took 
from the enemy his armor and divided his spoils, 
the religion of Jesus Christ has been a despoiling 
rehgion. It has been characteristic of it to spoil 
the enemy. One of the first spoils it took was 
Paul. What an hour that was in which this 
man, with all his culture, with all his brilliant 
qualities, intellectual and moral, was wrenched 
by Christ from the hands of the enemy, to be 
to Him ^'a, chosen vessel," to bear His name 
''far hence to the Gentiles!" What an hour 
that was in which the raging persecutor was 
taken as spoils by Him whom he was ignorantly 
persecuting; when Paul became at once the free- 
man, and (as he delighted to call himself) ''the 
slave of Christ." St. Augustine, with all his 



294 The Dividing of the Spoils, 

intellectual acumen and philosophical culture — 
he, too, was ''spoils;" he was taken from a dis- 
solute and profligate life to be the great servant 
of Christ, the great teacher, the great light of 
the Church in the century in which he lived. 
And so it has ever been. Christ has been the 
greatest of all despoilers. The history of Christi- 
anity has been the history of Christ, coming 
upon the enemy, and overcoming him, and 
taking from him his armor and dividing the 
spoils. 

Nay, from the very first, from the time when 
the children of Israel, departing out of Egypt, 
''spoiled the Egyptians," it has been character- 
istic of God, and God's people, and God's service, 
to take spoils. All that is great and good in the 
world; all precious things, whether in nature or 
art; all that is noble and beautiful in philosophy 
or poetry; all brilliant capabilities or useful 
powers, whether of intellect or heart or will — all 
these belong to Christ, and, when found else- 
where than in His service, are capable of being, 
and liable to be, seized by Him as spoil. In St. 
Mary's Church, Oxford, the writer was shown 
several sets of ancient altar plate, among which 
was a chalice richly adorned with precious stones. 
This had been given by Dean Burgon, whose 
father, having extensive trading connections 
with the East, had made a collection of Oriental 
gems. Some of the gems set in the chalice were 



2'he Dividing of the Spoils. 295 

engraved with mystic hieroglyphics; some of 
them were two thousand years old; some of 
them had probably once served in the worship 
of idols. Now it is probable that another set of 
altar plate, presented by Dr. J. H. Newman, 
when he was vicar of St. Mary'^s, more suitably 
expressed, by its rich simplicity and austerity, 
the writer^s idea of what these sacred vessels 
ought to be. Nevertheless, there was some- 
thing specially interesting and suggestive in this 
particular chalice, so richly set with precious 
stones and engraved gems. It seemed fit that 
these precious stones should burn and glow upon 
the altar of a Christian Church; for that altar 
and its service there is nothing too beautiful or 
precious. But the chalice was especially inter- 
esting because the gems with which it v/as adorned 
were spoils, taken from the heathen. It caused 
the writer to think of many things, especially of 
the manner in which, from the beginning, Christ 
and His religion have taken and divided ''spoils.'^ 
Christianity has taken heathen temples and 
changed them into Christian churches; heathen 
words, and invested them wdth a new and higher 
meaning; heathen customs, and given them a 
Christian character. All things are Christ^s; all 
precious stones, and all the beautiful and preci- 
ous things in nature and art, which these appro- 
priately represent. They are His, and, to recover 
them. He despoils the enemy in whose possession 
they are found. 



296 The Dividing of the Spoils. 

Especially did this chalice, with its precious 
stones, seen by him there, in St. Mary's church 
at Oxford, remind the writer of some other 
and nobler spoils taken from the heathen; of 
the Latin and Greek languages and literatures, 
which for centuries have played so great a part 
in the history of the Universities of Oxford and 
Cambridge, and which have had so much to do 
with the education of generation after generation 
of England's greatest sons. The writer thought 
of these, the noblest and most precious spoils 
ever taken from the heathen. And then he re- 
membered one of his favorite poems in ''The 
Christian Year." It is the one for the third 
Sunday in Lent, and is based on the sentence of 
the Gospel for that Sunday, in which our Savior 
speaks of Himself as overcoming the strong man, 
and dividing his spoils. Having sung of the spoil- 
ing of the Egyptians and the spoiling of the 
Canaanites, Keble, in this lyric, goes on to cele- 
brate the greatest spoiling of all — the spoiling 
of^'' Immortal Greece:" 

''And now another Caanan yields 
To Tliine all-conquering ark; — 
Fly from the "old poetic" fields, 
Ye Paynini shadows dark! 
Immortal Greece, dear land of glorious lays, 
Lo! here the "unknown God" of thy unconscious 
praise 

"The olive-wreath, the ivied wand, 
'The sword in myrtles drest.' 



The Dividing of the Spoils. 297 

Each legend of the shadowy strand, 
Now wakes a vision blest; 
As little children lisp, and tell of Heaven, 
So thoughts beyond their thought to those high 
Bards were given, 

"And these are ours: Thy partial grace 

The tempting treasure lends: 
These relics of a guilty race 
Are forfeit to Thy friends; 
What seemed an idol hymn, now breathes of Thee, 
Tun'd by Faith's ear to some celestial melody, 

"There's not a strain to Memory dear 

Nor flower in classic grove. 
There's not a sweet note warbled here, 
But minds us of Thy Love, 
O Lord, our Lord, and spoiler of our foes. 
There is no light but Thine; with Thee all beauty 
glows." 



XXXIL 
HAIL TO THE DEFEATED! 

When Brennus and his Gauls overran Italy, 
defeated the Roman army and plundered Rome, 
and when the ransom of a thousand pounds of 
gold, with which they were finally bought off, 
was being weighed out, it is a well-known story 
that, in reply to the remonstrance of a Roman 
tribune against the use of false weights by the 
Gauls, the Gallic chieftain flung his sword into 
the scale, with the exclamation, ^'Vae victis!'^ 
''Woe to the conquered !'' It is an old, signifi- 
cant, barbaric cry, which the advancement of 
civilization has not wholly deprived of its char- 
acteristic import. The lot of the conquered is 
by no means now what it was in ages when the 
doctrine that might makes right was more be- 
lieved in than it is at present; nevertheless the 
condition of the vanquished is always character- 
ized in some degree by that ''woe" which Brennus 
pronounced upon it. To be defeated is at least, 
for the most part, to be disparaged; it may not 
mean oppression, but it does mean oblivion; it 
may not bring destruction, but it does entail dis- 
regard and neglect. It is success that is praised; 
failure is not praised. Men reserve their shouts 

298 



Hail to the Defeated! 299 

for the victor. The world has never lacked, and 
never will lack, for such songs as ''Lo, the con- 
quering hero comes!" But the conquered, hero 
though he may be — as a rule, there are no shouts 
for him; no songs are sung in his honor; he comes 
and goes in silence. 

Yet those have never been wanting who, look- 
ing beneath the surface of things, have perceived 
that not only the conqueror, but also often- 
times the conquered, is deserving of praise. 
Nay, they sometimes perceive that, as regards 
all the essential elements of victory, the van- 
quished are the victors. They are not always 
willing to acknowledge the finality of a defeat 
sustained on any particular occasion. In regard 
to some causes they are of the mind of Cato, as 
expressed in Lucan's famous line — "Victrix 
causa Deis placuit, sed victa Catoni/' — ''The vic- 
torious cause was pleasing to the gods, but to 
Cato the cause that was conquered."' They look 
beyond; they have prophetic vision to see that 
the cause that is vanquished to-day may be 
victorious to-morrow. Nay, more : they perceive 
that sometimes the vanquished are victorious, 
even in being vanquished, or, at least, contribute 
their full share to the real victory, that is, the 
final settlement by which the question in dispute 
is settled. At all events, they recognize the fact 
that, wherever a victory is gained and a defeat 
sustained, the chief thing to be considered is, 



300 Hail to the Defeated! 

not whether one gained the victory or not, but 
what aims and purposes he cherished, and what 
qualities he brought into exercise, in the effort 
to accomplish his object, whether he actually 
accomplished it or not. Whether one particular 
"cause,'^ whatever it may be, triumphs to-day, 
or to-morrow, or not until after many years, 
is of little consequence. Indeed, it may not be 
destined to triumph at all; that belongs to God, 
and not to us. A man^s cause may be mistaken; 
he may, without knowing it, be fighting against 
destiny. But the fidelity and loyalty, the 
magnanimity and courage which he manifests 
in contending for it — ^these are never mistaken. 
These, after all, are the chief ingredients of every 
victory worth contending for; and these a man 
may have whether he succeeds or fails, whether 
he conquers or is conquered. 

As a rule, there are no shouts in honor of the 
defeated, no songs to hail the coming of the van- 
quished. Yet occasionally a voice is lifted up, 
pleading their cause, protesting against the 
neglect of them, proclaiming their praise. The 
most distinct and powerful utterance of this kind, 
which we can at present recall, is that of one of 
our own American poets, Walt Whitman, whose 
language, because it expresses so strikingly what 
we have been trying to say, we beg leave to 
quote : 



Hail to the Defeated! 301 

"I play not marches for accepted victors only — I play 
great marches for conquered and slain persons. 

Have you heard that it is good to gain the day? 

I also say that it is good to fall — battles are lost in the 
same spirit in which they are won. 
I beat and pound for the dead; 

I blow through my embouchures my loudest and gayest 
for them. 
Vivas to those who haA^e failed! 

And to those whose war- vessels sank in the sea! 

And to those themselves who sank in the sea! 

And to all generals that lost engagements, and all over- 
come heroes! 

And the numberless unknown heroes,equal to the great- 
est heroes known!" 

There is something very beautiful in the wide- 
ness and inclusiveness of this strain. It is beau- 
tiful with the beauty of justice. It will sing for ac- 
cepted victors, but not only for these ; it will sing 
for unaccepted and unrecognized victors, too. It 
throbs with the passionate admiration of hero- 
ism, reckless of whether it succeeded or failed. 
It is a song for the defeated; a paean for all '* over- 
come heroes" and all ''unknown heroes;" and 
we may well be pleased that it comes to us from 
an American poet. 

It is a long way from modern American poetry 
to ancient Greek oratory, but, somehow, this 
strain of Whitman's has reminded us of a certain 
passage in a great Greek oration. The oration 
is none other than the De Corona of Demosthenes; 
and the particular passage is that of the famous 



302 Hail to the Defeated! 

Oath. The De Corond is generally considered to 
be the summit of human eloquence; and of this 
supreme oration the Oath is universally admitted 
to be the most eloquent passage. Apart from 
the course of the argument to which it belongs, 
it would be difficult to give an idea of the nature 
and power of this passage; separated from its 
connections, it would not seem to be the supreme 
thing which it actually is. It has its roots away 
back in the argument; it is of the nature of a 
culmination; and it is an instance of the perfect 
fusion of logic and passion, which does not often 
take place, but which is always witnessed when 
human utterance reaches its highest. It has 
been said of the oratory of Demosthenes in gen- 
eral, that it is ''logic on fire." And this descrip- 
tion is especially true of the Oath, which is what 
it is, largely because in it the two great forces of 
argument and passion are perfectly welded into 
one. But, we venture to say that the passage 
owes its power in a certain degree, also, to the 
circumstance, that it is an affirmation of the prin- 
ciple we have been trying to state. It is a dis- 
tinct declaration that the honor to which men 
are entitled from their fellow-men does not de- 
pend upon the successful issue of their exertions, 
but upon the principles for which, and the spirit 
in which, they contended. 

Demosthenes is defending, against the attacks 
of iEschines, the policy pursued by him in the 



Hail to the Defeated! 303 

past. His argument in regard to this matter is 
of a cumulative character. He shows that, in 
most trying circumstances and with exertions 
beyond his strength, he had honestly and dili- 
gently done all that a statesman could be ex- 
pected to do. He affirms, and undertakes to 
prove, that, had any other policy been pursued, 
the results would have been worse. Nay, he 
goes still further, and declares that, even if all 
the results had been foreseen, there was nothing 
else the commonwealth could have done that 
would have been worthy of herself and her an- 
cestral principles. ''But since he insists so 
strongly on the event, I will even assert some- 
thing of a paradox: and I beg and pray of you 
not to marvel at its boldness, but kindly to 
consider what I say. If then the results had 
been foreknown to all, if all had foreseen them, 
and you, Jiischines, had foretold them and pro- 
tested with clamor and outcry — you that never 
opened your mouth — not even then should the 
commonwealth have abandoned her design, if she 
had any regard for glory, or ancestry, or futurity." 
He shows them that, under his guidance, they 
had acted in accordance with their own princi- 
ples, and with what had been the spirit of the 
commonwealth long before his time; for it had 
always been the custom of their country to eon- 
tend for precedency and honor and renown, and 
to ''accept no foreign law." How, he asks, could 



304 Hail to the Defeated! 

they have beheld strangers visiting their city 
and finding that the foreigner had been made 
leader and lord of all, but other people without 
them had made the struggle to prevent it; espe- 
cially when, in former times, their country had 
never preferred an ignominious security to the 
battle for honor. 

It is in the midst of affirmations, appeals and 
arguments like these that he comes finally, in 
the most natural manner, to the particular pas- 
sage we have in mind, in which, as it were, reiter- 
ating and summing up all that he has been saying, 
he exclaims: 

"'But never, never, can you have done wrong, O Athen- 
ians, in undertaking the battle for the freedom and safety 
of all! I swear it by your forefathers — those that met 
at the peril at Marathon, those that took the field at 
Plataea, those in the sea-fight at Salamis, and those at 
Artemisium, and many other brave men who repose in 
the public monuments, all of whom alike, as being worthy 
of the same honor, the country buried, ^schines, not 
only the successful or victorious! Justly! For the duty 
of brave men has been done by all: their fortune has been 
such as the Deity assigned to each." 

This, reader, is what is known as the Demos- 
thenic Oath. It has been judged by many com- 
petent critics to be the most eloquent passage in 
the greatest oration ever delivered. It is cir- 
tainly a significant circumstance that this supreme 
passage of human eloquence should be of the 
nature of a passionate affirmation of the truth 



Hail to the Defeated! 305 

that the event of any course of conduct pursued 
is not the chief thing to be considered ; that it is 
not the successful or unsuccssful issue of actions 
that ought to determine the honor or dishonor 
belonging to those by whom they were performed. 
''All of whom alike, as being worthy of the same 
honor, the country buried, not only the success- 
ful or victorious!'^ There is something beauti- 
ful and glorious in these words, so different from 
the barbaric cry "Tae Victis!'' This passage is, 
as it were, a noble strain in honor of all brave 
men who did their duty, whether they succeeded 
or failed. It does no injustice to, it puts no 
disparagement upon, those who fought bravely 
and won; it simply includes in the same honor- 
able list wath these those who fought bravely 
and lost. It is a song that might be entitled, 
"Hail to the Defeated!'' or, ''Lo, the Van- 
quished Hero Comes !'^ 

Principles are eternal; the perfect expression 
of a genuine principle can never grow old. The 
passage we have quoted is as applicable to the 
affairs of to-day as to those of two thousand years 
ago. The truth which it utters has its illustra- 
tion in events taking place under our own eyes. 
It perhaps does not require much of the spirit 
of prophecy to foretell which side will conquer 
and which be defeated in the war now being waged 
in South Africa. It may be that the Boers are 
contending vainly against destiny; that Provi- 



XXXIIL 
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SORROW. 

The Bible has not inappropriately been called 
the Book of Sorrow. It is a grave, serious, 
sombre book; its predominant tone is not that 
of brightness and gayety ; from beginning to end 
it has much to say of affliction, of sorrow, of 
suffering. It is impossible to hide this austere 
character of the Scriptures; it is not possible, 
and if it were possble it would not be desirable, 
to transform the Bible into an interesting, en- 
tertaining, amusing volume. Its austerity is its 
excellence, its sombreness is its strength and 
glory. For it is the book, not only of God, but 
also of human life; and human life, whatever it 
may be upon its surface, is in its depths grave 
and serious, sad and sorrowful. 

There are, however, certain peculiarities in 
the manner in which sorrow is mentioned in the 
Bible. It is not mentioned alone, but always 
in connection with joy. If afflictions are spoken 
of, it is more than probable that the word *' glory", 
will be found to occur in the same sentence. ''For 
I reckon," says St. Paul, in a characteristic and 
typical passage, ^Hhat the sufferings of this 
present time are not worthy to be compared 

308 



The Significance of Sorrow. 309 

with the glory which shall be revealed in us/' 
And he says, again, ''For our light affliction, 
which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far 
more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." 
Moreover, these two things are so mentioned 
together that the sorrow is for the sake of the 
joy, the affliction for the sake of the glory. The 
sorrow is a preliminary, a preface, a parenthesis, 
a precedent condition, an incident, a passing 
state. That upon which the emphasis falls and 
rests, that which is final and abiding, is the joy 
and not the sorrow. It is said, ''Weeping may 
endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morn- 
ing." It is said, ''And the ransomed of the 
Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs 
and everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall 
obtain joy and gladness and sorrow and sighing 
shall flee away." Always, for those who love 
and trust God, it is the weeping that passes, 
the joy that comes and stays; always it is the 
joy and gladness that abide forever. More than 
once our Savior predicted His sufferings and 
death, but always in the same manner and with 
the same conclusion. "Behold, we go up to 
Jerusalem, and the Son of Man shall be be- 
trayed unto the chief priests, and unto the 
scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, 
and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock 
and to scourge, and to crucify Him; and the 
third day He shall rise again" — ^that is always 
the significant and solemn conclusion. 



310 The Significance of Sorrow. 

Not only thus, but the Bible places these two 
things together in such a way as plainly to imply 
a vital connection between the humiliation and 
the glorification, the sorrow and the joy, the 
sorrow being, in some mysterious way, the origin 
and the cause of the joy. The relation is not 
one of mere succession in point of time, but one 
of cause and effect. It is not that the sorrow 
passes away, and is then succeeded by joy, but 
the sorrow itself causes the joy, which would 
otherwise have no existence. It is our '^ight 
affliction'^ that works for us '^a far more exceed- 
ing and eternal weight of glory." It is because 
the corn of wheat falls into the ground and dies 
that it ''bringeth forth much fruit.'' It is 
because Christ Jesus ''humbled Himself and be- 
came obedient unto death, even the death of 
the cross," that God ''hath highly exalted Him.'! 
Our Savior said to His disciples, "Ye shall be 
sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into 
joy;" that is, the very ground and cause of their 
sorrowing shall become the ground and cause 
of their rejoicing. What a profound utterance 
of this great truth is contained in our Savior's 
words to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, 
on the day of His resurrection: ''Ought not 
Christ to have suffered these things and to 
enter into His glory?" 

Such is the mysterious relation, the more 
mysterious the more we think about it, between 



The Significance of Sorrow. 311 

these Uyo so entirely different things. Why is 
it that affliction, sorrow, suffering, should be 
associated, and thus vitally associated, with joy 
and glory? Why, since God is love, is suffering 
the indispensable condition of attaining to that 
which is highest? Why is it that "all the best 
and most beautiful flowers of thought and char- 
acter seem to spring up in the track of suffering?" 
Why is it that love and sorrow are always wedded 
the one to the other; that the highest love and 
the highest sorrow inevitably belong together; 
and so, that the Christ had to be "a man of 
sorrows and acquainted with grief?" 

Perhaps the best answer is, that we do not 
know. Yet, as regards sorrow, its relation to 
joy, and its exalted and beneficent character 
and ministration, there are not wanting con- 
siderations which may at least serve to throw a 
dim light upon the problem which from the begin- 
ning has agitated the minds and hearts of men. 

In the first place, there is something which 
sorrow indicates. While not in itself an excel- 
lent or desirable thing, it is the token of things, 
of capabilities, of traits of disposition and char- 
acter, that are excellent and to be desired. A 
man who is capable of great sorrow is capable of 
much besides. The sorrow he feels is the sign 
and the measure of the susceptibility and sym- 
pathy and tenderness and goodness that are in 
him. The man who is capable of the acutest 



312 The Significance of Sorrow. 

pain is capable also of the intensest pleasure. 
The highest has to be susceptible, and this sus- 
ceptibility has to be two-fold — a susceptibility 
of sorrow, as well as joy. A stone has no sus- 
ceptibility one way or the other ; but it is a stone. 
The higher up we go in the scale of life, the more 
possibility of pain we find; the susceptibility of 
suffering is the price we pay for what we are. 
Thus it comes to pass that, as has been said, 
"the mark of rank in nature is capacity for pain;" 
that "our sorrow is the inverted image of our 
nobleness.'' Thus we see how, in this world of 
sin and imperfection, sorrow must needs be in- 
separable from joy. The higher we ascend the 
greater power of sorrow we find. And the high- 
est must of necessity be "a man of sorrows and 
acquainted with grief." Thus, we say, sorrow 
is what it is, and sustains the high relationships 
it does, partly because of what it indicates. 

But partly, also, because of what it takes away. 
The question of attaining to glory is, in a certain 
sense, and to a certain extent, a question of 
something to be removed ; of certain things to be 
eliminated; of our being set free from certain 
limitations, hindrances, obstructions, clogging 
adhesions. The glory is there, but it is an ob- 
scured, oppressed, imprisoned glory. The pre- 
cious gold is there, but combined with much 
earthly alloy. What shall release this glory; 
what shall separate the gold from the dross? 



The Significance of Sorrow. 313 

Affliction, sorrow, suffering — ^these forces alone, 
it would seem, are capable of acomplishing this 
result. 

It is an old and worn image, the image of gold 
mixed with alloy, but it is the image which 
Scripture uses when speaking of affliction and 
tribulation. ''I will bring them through the 
fire, and refine them as silver is refined, and try 
them as gold is tried." How much there is to 
be removed from it; what a process of beating 
and pounding, of pulverizing and burning, there 
must be before the gold can appear in its purity. 
It is so wherever there is anything precious. The 
principal diamond mines of the world are in 
South Africa; and the chief of these, no more 
than four or five in number, are contained within 
a circle three and one-half miles in diameter. 
One of these, the Kimberley mine, yielded from 
1871 to 1885, 17,500,000 carats of diamonds, 
valued at $130,000,000, and weighing, as precious 
stones, about three and one-half tons. To ob- 
tain these stones, 20,000,000 tons of earth and 
rock were excavated. That is to say, for every 
ton of diamonds about six million tons of earth 
and rock had to be removed. How great a part 
the work of removal has to perform in bringing 
to light things that are precious! 

Michael Angelo used to consider, not so much 
that he was fashioning and producing an angel, 
but that the angel was imprisoned in the block 



314 The Significance of Sorrow. 

of marble on which he was working, and that it 
was his office to release it. The angel was sleep- 
ing in the stone; it belonged to him to remove 
the superfluous, adhering, encumbering, encrust- 
ing matter in which it was concealed, and bring 
its beauty and glory to light. He used to say, 
''the more the marble w^astes, the more the 
statue grows." We are like that. We are like 
angels imprisoned in rough stones; and the hand 
of the Master is removing the clogging adhesions 
of extraneous matter by which our glory is con- 
cealed; and the strokes of His chisel are our 
sufferings. There is no one in whose personality 
there does not lie something exceedingly precious, 
more precious than gold or diamonds, or any 
beautiful work of man's art. But it is impris- 
oned and oppressed, hidden and obscured by 
multitudinous limitations, faults, sins, which 
need to be removed. It is like gold which cannot 
appear in its purity until the ore which contains 
it has been pounded and pulverized so that all 
foreign substances may be taken away. It is like 
a diamond which can be brought to light only 
after the separation and removal of the tons of 
earth and rock by which it is concealed. It is as 
if that which is highest were locked up in a dun- 
geon, and pain were the only key to unlock the 
dungeon's door. It is as if our noblest capabili- 
ties and powers were sleeping an enchanted sleep, 
and the touch of sorrow alone could awaken 
them. 



The Significance of Sorrow. 315 

More, however, than in what it indicates, and 
more than in what it takes away, the significance 
of sorrow consists in what it communicates and 
imparts. Sorrow, when it is permitted to perform 
its appointed and appropriate work, imparts cer- 
tain most precious gifts. It imparts knowledge; 
we learn by suffering. It is sorrow, chiefly, that 
brings us to the feet of the Great Teacher, to 
learn of Him. The best, greatest, highest les- 
sons are to be learned only by entering into the 
fellowship of His sufferings, only at the foot of 
His cross. There we learn patience, gentleness, 
tenderness, sympathy. Patience — is there any- 
thing in this world more to be desired than that? 
St. Chrysostom called it "the queen of the vir- 
tues." It is the discipline of sorrow that chas- 
tens us, that takes away our petulance and im- 
patience, and makes us of a patient spirit. It 
is sorrow, above all, that invests us with the power 
of being a comfort and a help to others. It is by 
its means that 'Hhe power of Christ" is made to 
rest upon us; the power of Him who is "touched 
with a feeling of our infirmities," because He 
was "in all points tempted like as we are, yet 
without sin;" the power of Him who is "able 
to succor them that are tempted," because " He 
Himself hath suffered being tempted." Signifi- 
cant because of what it takes away, sorrow is 
more significant still because of what it imparts. 
It takes away crudeness and rawness, and im- 



316 The Significance of Sorrow. 

parts refinement ; takes away hardness and harsh- 
ness, and imparts gentleness and tenderness; 
takes away bitterness and imparts sweetness; 
takes away petulance and imparts meekness and 
patience; takes away helplessnesss, and imparts 
the power to help. 

Greatest of all schools is the school of sorrow. 
reader, hast thou ever been in that school? 
Dost thou know its sombre halls? Hast thou, 
still trusting in God, walked its lonely corridors? 
Hast thou sat down there, in the ashes of dis- 
appointment, and eaten thy bread with tears, 
and watched and waited, through the dark and 
lonely night, for the breaking of the day? Then 
thou knowest, then thou needest not to be told, 
what lessons are there to be learned. 

Be sure of this, O child of God, that when, in 
His providence, sorrow enters into thy life, it is 
with no other intention than that of leading thee 
onward and upward. When sorrow comes, open 
wide the door and bid her welcome. Entertaining 
her, thou wilt find that thou hast been entertain- 
ing an angel unawares. Some day she will be 
transfigured before thine eyes. Some day thou 
shalt find thy sorrow 'turned into joy." 

"A dewdrop, falling on the wild sea wave, 
Exclaimed in fear, "I perish in this gravel" 
But, in a shell received, that drop of dew 
Unto a pearl of marvelous beauty grew; 
And, happy now, the grace did magnify, 



The Significance of Sorrow. 317 

Which thrust it forth, as it had feared, to die; 
Until, again, "I perish quite!" it said. 
Torn by rude diver from its ocean bed. 
Oh, unbelieving! So it came to gleam 
Chief jewel in a monarch's diadem. 

"The seed must die, before the com appears. 
Out of the ground, in blade and fruitful ears, 
Low have those ears before the sickle lain, 
Ere thou canst treasure up the golden grain. 
The grain is crushed before the bread is made; 
And the bread broke, ere life to man conveyed. 
Oh! be content to die, to be laid low. 
And to be crushed, and to be broken so, 
If thou upon God's table may'st be bread. 
Life-giving food for souls an-hungered. " 



XXXIV. 
THE ELECT HOUR. 

Not all hours are alike; some are "elect, pre- 
cious." Now and then there comes to us an hour 
of emancipation and exaltation. There are times 
when we are left to ourselves, and there are times 
when we are "visited." "Left to ourselves, we 
sink and perish; visited, we lift up our heads and 
live." The elect hour is an hour of "visitation;" 
of insight; of freedom; of life. Then shackles 
are stricken from our limbs; then the scales fall 
from our eyes; then we see, and feel, and know; 
then we are invested, as it were, with new^ capa- 
bilities and powers. It is then that we perceive 
the meaning of things concealed from us before; 
it is then that we climb the mountains of certainty 
and look down upon the clouds and mists be- 
neath. Such an hour is described in the con- 
cluding lines of Matthew Arnold's "Buried 
Life.". In that hour, it is said: 

"A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, 

And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again. 

The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain. 

And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know. 

A man becomes aware of his life's flow, 

And hears its winding murmur, and he sees 

318 



The Elect Hour. 319 

The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. 

And there arrives a lull in the hot race 

Wherein he doth forever chase 

The flying and elusive shadow, rest. 

An air of coolness plays upon his face, 

And an unwonted calm pervades his breast; 

And then he thinks he knows 

The hills where his life rose, 

And the sea where it goes." 

It is impossible to predict when or how the 
elect hour will come; it is like the wind, which 
'^bloweth where it listeth;" its ways are not our 
ways. We are deceived by appearances. Many 
an hour has all the outw^ard seeming, but nothing 
of the reality, of the hour that is elect; many an 
hour has all of the reality, but nothing of the 
outward seeming. Here is an hour which, seem- 
ingly, ought to belong to the elect; it was speci- 
ally appointed; it was looked forward to and 
prepared for; it bears all the outward trappings 
of a "great occasion." It comes; it goes; 
it was an ordinary, earthly hour, after all; 
it was none of the elect. Here, on the other 
hand, is an hour for which no appointment 
was made, and which bears no visible mark 
of distinction; it gave no sign; it came 
upon us suddenly and stealthily; and, lo, it is 
not from earth, but from heaven; it is elect. 
For the elect hour no earthly appointment can 
be made. All things that are elect, whether 
they be times or events or personalities, come 



320 The Elect Hour. 

otherwise than by human appointment or 
arrangement. Like the kingdom of God itself, 
all the things pertaining to that kingdom come 
"not with observation/' Their feet, as a Greek 
proverb says of the feet of the avenging deities, 
are "shod with wool." The elect thing, what- 
ever it may be, comes silently, secretly, stealth- 
ily, suddenly; its coming is always "in such an 
hour as ye think not." It has always been, in 
some sense, "while men slept," that the great 
event has taken place, or the great act has been 
performed. Afterwards they wake up and 
recognize the greatness of it; but at the time 
they "knew it not." This is the law of the elect 
hour. It is beyond the reach of calculation; it 
is independent of human appointment or arrange- 
ment; it belongs to the idea of it that it comes 
mysteriously and suddenly. It is a strange 
thing. "Thou hearest the sound thereof, but 
canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it 
goeth." 

Nevertheless, there are certain things, as re- 
gards the elect hour, which may be discerned 
with some degree of clearness; one of these is, 
its relation to the common and non-elect hours 
going before it. We have said that it comes 
suddenly and unexpectedly; as indeed it does, 
so far as our perception of its coming and its 
presence is concerned. Yet, in itself, that com- 
ing is not sudden; is not sudden, that is, in the 



The Elect Hour, 321 

sense of not having been prepared for. Nothing 
that is significant is absolutely sudden or soli- 
tary; if it stands alone, isolated, unrelated, it is 
insignificant. The significant thing ''belongs;" 
it has its relations ; it has had its origin, develop- 
ment, history; it '^cometh from afar." The 
elect thing is such, not because of its independ- 
ence of, but because of its vital relation to, that 
which is not elect. The uncommon has its roots 
in the common. The extraordinary is the legiti- 
mate offspring of the ordinary. The Alps, to 
use the well-known words of Professor Huxley, 
are "of one substance with the dullest clay, but 
raised by inward forces to that place of proud 
and seemingly inaccessible glory." He makes a 
fatal mistake who fails to perceive this intimate 
and vital relationship between these two things, 
apparently so different; who has a passion for 
the unusual and the extraordinary, but despises 
the usual and the ordinary. Hast thou a fever- 
ish longing for the uncommon, and dost thou 
despise the common? Art thou forever craving 
that which is distinguished, choice, precious, 
elect; and art thou at the same time discon- 
tented with, art thou forever neglecting and 
rejecting that which is common and every-day? 
Thou knowest not what thou art doing. The thing 
thou seekest thus thou shalt never find. The 
thing that is elect never comes to him who seeks 
it; least of all, to him who seeks it in a spirit of 



322 The Elect Hour, 

discontent with, or contempt of, the things that 
are not elect. The elect hour comes only to him 
who has learned to respect and love the hours 
that are common and undistinguished. 

It is interesting to reflect upon the mysterious 
relationship of the uncommon to the common; 
to remember, for example, that the precious 
diamond is of one and the same substance with 
so common a thing as charcoal. The elect hour 
is like the diamond, produced by the subjection 
of carbon to volcanic heat and volcanic pressure. 
It is like some precious essence or exract; like 
the costly volatile oil extracted from the petals 
of the rose, and known as attar of roses. It is 
estimated that 200,000 well-grown roses are 
required to produce half an ounce of the oil. 
It takes many common hours to make one that 
is elect. We go our way; we do our work; we 
bear our burdens. We try to be diligent, pains- 
taking and faithful. We remember the words, 
''He that is faithful in that which is least, is 
faithful also in much." Knowing that no one 
will do anything well unless he likes what he is 
doing, we try to put our hearts into our work; 
we would fain reverence and love the task that 
has been set us. But, all the same, it is tasks 
that we are performing; it is drudgery that we 
are undergoing; we are bearing "the burden and 
heat of the day." Our work is homely, uninter- 
esting, unattractive. The hours are common, 



The Elect Hour. 323 

earthly hours; they come, and go, and give no 
sign. There is in the drudgery itself no hint 
of the glory which drudgery is capable of pro- 
ducing; in the labor, no prophecy of the ease 
which is its lovely result ; in the pressure, no sug- 
gestion of the precious things which pressure 
alone can bring forth. Then, suddenly, all is 
changed. The burden and heat of the day are 
past ; the task has been performed ; the drudgery 
is at an end; the pressure ceases, and we hear a 
voice which says, "Well done, thou good and 
faithful servant! Thou hast toiled well; thou 
hast endured bravely. And thou art weary now. 
Come unto Me and rest." And then, somehow 
— who can tell how? — we are transported, as it 
were, to some lofty and lonely mountain top, 
to be there alone with Him who spake these 
gracious words. And there such things are said 
and done as cause us to know and feel that all 
the previous drudgery and pain were "but for a 
moment," and are "not to be compared with the 
glory" of that hour. It is the Elect Hour. It 
is an hour of rest and refreshment, of exaltation 
and inspiration, of vision and insight. And it 
is the direct and proper result of the multitudin- 
ous hours of toil or suffering that went before it. 
Without them it could have no existence what- 
ever. 

Not less evident than its relation to the com- 
mon hours which preceded it is the relation of 



324 The Elect Hour. 

the elect hour to the common hours by which it 
is followed. If, on the one hand, it is the reward 
of past, on the other, it is the preparation for 
future, accomplishments and endurances. Elect 
and precious as this hour is, it is ''not too bright 
or good for human nature's daily food.'' If ever 
we are carried to a mountain top, it is not that 
we may remain and reside there, but that we 
niay presently go down again to the lowlands. 
If rest is given us, it is that we may be prepared 
for toil or suffering; if vision is vouchsafed us, 
it is that we may translate it into action by the 
performance of duty. The elect hour is, by its 
very nature, of brief duration; it cannot tarry; 
it passes rapidly by; sometimes it has the swift- 
ness of a swallow's wing. This is the significance 
and glory of it, that, with all its brightness, it 
is most closely akin to hours of darkness, that, 
with all its ease and grace, it is but a preparation 
for hours of toil and drudgery. It is in that 
hour, and on the mountain top, that we have 
vision of our lives as they ought to be; it is 
afterwards, and in remembrance of that hour, 
that, amid daily toil and struggle, we endeavor 
to fashion our lives and characters according to 
the pattern which was shown us in the mount. 
Remote, mysterious, heavenly as it is, nothing is 
more closely related to things earthly and 
practical than the elect hour. To quote once 
more from Matthew Arnold, this time from the 
poem entitled ''Morality": 



The Elect Hour. 325 

"We cannot kindle when we will 

The fire which in the heart resides. 
The spirit bloweth and is still, 
In mystery our soul abides. 
But tasks in hours of insight willed 
Can be through hours of gloom fulfilled. " 

Aye, this is one of the distinctive characteris- 
tics of the elect hour, that it is an '4aour of in- 
sight/' and that tasks which are v/illed in that 
hour may be fulfilled in ''hours of gloom.'' 

Bright and glorious as is the elect hour, very 
close is its relationship to the hour of darkness. 
Once there was One to whom, in the midst of 
His life of toil, and suffering, and sorrow, there 
came an elect hour. It was, most fittingly, on 
a mountain top. It is written: ''And after six 
days Jesus taketh Peter, James and John his 
brother, and bringeth them up into an high 
mountain apart, and was transfigured before 
them; and His face did shine as the sun, and His 
raiment was white as the light. And, behold, 
there appeared unto them Moses and Elias 
talking with Him." What was it that was 
spoken of in that hour? It is said that they 
"spake of His decease, which He should accom- 
plish at Jerusalem." There was presently com- 
ing into that strange life an hour of unutterable 
darkness. We read, further on, in the history 
of the crucifixion, of the deep, dark midnight 
which overwhelmed the soul of this innocent 



326 The Elect Hour. 

sufferer; a darkness that was the very essence 
of all possible or conceivable loneliness and 
desolation of spirit. There was external dark- 
ness, too; the outward and visible sign of that 
which was within. ''Now from the sixth hour 
there was darkness over all the land unto the 
ninth hour." It was this that was coming; the 
hour of Gethsemane and Calvary was not far off; 
and it was evidently because of them, and in 
preparation for them, that the hour on the 
Mount of Transfiguration w^as vouchsafed. It 
was in the hour of gloom that He endured, and 
accomplished, and fulfilled what had been fore- 
seen, and accepted and willed, in the hour of 
brightness and glory. 

Such is the elect hour. Bright and glorious 
in itself, it is at once the result of, and the prepa- 
ration for, many hours that have no brightness 
or glory in them, hours of gloom and darkness, 
of toil and drudgery, of sorrow and suffering. 




DR. KIEFFER AND GRANDSON 



XXXV. 
THE BLACK ROCK. 

The parson, somewhat weary of writing, leaned 
back in his chair and gazed through the window 
opposite his study table. From this window (for 
the parsonage is situated on high ground), there 
is presented to the parson's eyes, whenever he 
lifts them from his writing, a somewhat extended 
view : first, a low-lying section of the town ; then 
fields, gradually sloping upwards; then a belt 
of woods, hiding from the eye the wide interval 
betw^een itself and the mountain; and, finally, 
the mountain, seven miles distant. It is a point 
from which one may make, on a limited 
scale, meteorological observations. Here, in 
summer, the summer storms may be seen 
skirmishing across this quarter of the valley, 
as bodies of Union and Confederate cavalry used 
to do thirty-five years ago. Here we have seen 
two separate columns of thunder-storm effect 
a junction of their forces, and go rejoicing on 
their thunderous way together. The other day 
day we lifted up our eyes and saw a curious phe- 
nomenon; a mile or two of the mountain's length 
was entirely hidden from view as by a white veil. 
The limits of the white eclipse were somewhat 

327 



328 The Black Rock. 

distinctly defined; to the north and to the south 
of the obscuration, the mountain apeared in its 
usual beautiful blue, but all was white between. 
Then we knew that it was the first snow-squall 
of the season, marching like a white squadron 
across the mountain. 

On this particular occasion, the parson fell 
to thinking of the mysterious manner in which 
we are affected by our surroundings, of the im- 
perceptible and stealthy way in which the things 
to which we have been long accustomed, enter 
into our lives and become, as it were, a part of 
us. He was thinking especially, of the Black 
Rock; there, on the mountain yonder; directly 
opposite his study-table and study- window ; on 
which his eye of necessity rests whenever he 
looks up from his work; and which, from years 
of looking in upon him at his studies, has become 
a sort of " silent partner" in his affairs as a student. 
The Black Rock, reader, is a projecting crag, or 
combination of crags, on the front, and almost 
at the very summit, of the mountain which bounds 
the valley on its eastern side. At this distance, it 
and its surroundings (for, for ages the rock has 
been showering down fragments of itself on the 
space below) show as a great, bare, dark spot 
upon the surface of the mountain. Often it is 
dimly discerned, but sometimes, when flooded 
with light from the level rays of the setting sun 
on the opposite side of the valley, it is revealed 



The Black Rock. 329 

with remarkable distinctness. The Rock itself is 
black and rugged, but it looks out upon, it is 
associated with, it is itself a part of, a scene of 
surpassing loveliness. From its summit one may 
gaze, not only across a section of the narrow 
strip of western Maryland, but far into Pennsyl- 
vania on the north, and far into Virginia on 
the south, catching glimpses of the Potomac 
in more places than one, particularly where it 
emerges from the mountains far to the west. The 
Black Rock, though difficult of access, was once 
a favorite place of resort for pleasure-parties; 
it has within recent years been relegated into 
obscurity and neglect through the making public 
of a popular place of multitudinous resort several 
miles farther to the north, where the mountain 
is crossed by a railroad. The writer remembers 
when, with a solitary companion, he made his 
first visit to the Black Rock. We had lost our 
way, and not knowing that the object of our 
quest was so near, were pushing through the 
underbrush of the shaggy mountain top, when 
a single step, as it were, brought us on to the 
summit of the rock, and in the twinkling of an 
eye flashed the whole beauty and glory of the 
scene upon our eyes. It was a moment not to be 
forgotten; a moment for silence and for reverent 
contemplation. 

We were there once more, with three dear friends, 
in the last days of last October. Something in 



330 The Black Rock. 

the very loneliness and desolation of the spot, 
emphasized by the autumnal surroundings, seemed 
to make it more impressive and attractive. We 
noted the action of wind and weather upon the 
rock; how, in the great, broad, topmost stone 
of one of the turret-like structures, grooves had 
been worn, and little hollows eaten out, forming 
miniature lakes, filled at the time with rain-water. 
The Black Rock has endured much. There it 
stands, silent, lonely, majestic; patient with a 
grim patience; though rugged and hard-visaged 
itself, yet looking out on such a scene of beauty 
as one might gladly travel far to see. It gives 
no sign; it remains calm and unmoved; it heard, 
unmoved, the guns of the battles of South Moun- 
tain and Antietam but a short distance away. 
To the parson, however, the Black Rock is 
more than an object to be visited; it is a '^ pre- 
sence;" it has become, through long use, the daily 
companion and co-partner of his labors and his 
thoughts. It gazes in at his window; it asso- 
ciates itself with him in his tasks; all the work 
that has been done in this study has been done 
under its supervision and inspection. We have 
called it a '^silent partner"; it is not silent, how- 
ever, in the sense of not speaking. For often it 
speaks, and indeed sometimes has much to 
say, in its own peculiar and 'somewhat severe 
manner. The Rock cannot be called a gay com- 
panion. Its aspect is sombre; its words are stern; 



The Black Rock. 331 

its criticism is relentless. We do not remember, 
for example, that it ever uttered a compliment. 
It likes not compliments; it knows no t the lan- 
guage thereof. Once or twice, indeed, on a Sunday 
night, after a hard week's work, we thought we 
heard it faintly say, ''Well done!" But it is a 
far cry from the Black Rock to the parson's 
study, and we may have been mistaken. 

It is commandments, rather than compli- 
ments, to the utterance of which the Rock is 
addicted. These seem to suit it better; moun- 
tains and commandments go well together. 
It has a way of flinging them at us, straight from 
the mountain, as occasion may seem to require. 
They come suddenly, and for the most part very 
opportunely, and are spoken in no faint voice, 
but are shouted out with the loud and unequi- 
vocal voice of genuine command. We remember 
one critical occasion on which, after long hesita- 
tion and debate, the whole question was instant- 
ly and irrevocably settled by a commandment 
hurled in at the window as from a catapult. 
And the commandment was — ''Thou shalt not 
flinch!" 

The favorite doctrines of the Blaack Rock are 
such as a rock would naturally be expected to 
hold. Though itself shouting sometimes with so 
loud a voice, it is a great believer in silence. 
What sermons it has preached to us upon this 
theme, proclaiming the dignity, the modesty, 



332 The Black Rock. 

the security, the triumphant power of silence! 
It holds that it is a good and necessary thing to 
wait, and that the strong and able man will be 
characterized by an immense power of waiting. 
Let a man plant himself (so it says) on the firm 
foundations of reality and truth; let him do 
strenuously the thing which God has appointed 
to be done by him ; and then let him wait, calmly, 
without any anxiety or nervous fear ; all will come 
right; every such man shall in the long run come 
to his own. The Black Rock is a great believer in 
the Long Run. And sometimes, when it speaks 
thus, its words remind us of one of our own poets, 
who says, in his large, calm, confident way: 
"And whether I come to my own today, or in 
ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheer- 
fully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I 
can wait." They remind us also of those 
words of Goethe's: ^'Ohne Hast, aher ohne 
Rast." Sometimes, also, looking out upon this 
great, calm Rock, abiding there quietly in its 
place, and preaching this doctrine of waiting, 
we have been caused to remember that saying of 
Emerson's: ''If the single man plant himself 
indomitably upon his instincts, and there abide, 
the huge world will come round to him." What 
a splendid thing it is to plant oneself on what is 
really fundamental, and then to wait and see the 
huge world come swinging round to where he 
stands. 



The Black Rock. 333 

The Black Rock has much to say of patient 
endurance. There are many things in life which 
are simply to be endured; there is no other way. 
There are victories won by passivity, quite as great 
as those which are won by activity. '^ Victor quia 
victima;" in order to be victor, one must often 
be the victim. Let the storm break upon thee, 
and waste its force upon thee; let many storms 
wear grooves in thee, and leave manifold marks 
on thee, to be worn afterwards. But see thou to 
it that thou be not moved from thy place, and 
that, after the storm has passed by, thy feet be 
found fixed, as before, on the everlasting and 
immovable foundations. 

Of Reality, also, our friend makes large ac- 
count, and often enters into discourse. Great is 
reality, however rugged it may be. The actually 
existing thing, whatever it may be, however plain 
and bare and homely, is a thing to be regarded 
and respected, to be seen and dealt with as it 
is, and not otherwise. First of all, let us look 
about and see things as they actually are; let 
us love reality and fact; let us have nothing to 
do with appearances, affectations, unrealities. 
Let us know, also, that the very ruggedest real- 
ity is capable of being associated in the most 
intimate manner, with heavenly beauty and 
glory. Thus, at times, speaks the Black Rock, 
having indeed good authority to speak thus ; and 
branching off then, very probably, into discussion 



334 The Black Rock. 

of the relation between the Real and the Ideal, 
a theme on which it is never weary of discours- 
ing. The words of the Black Rock are, as we have 
said mostly stern. Yet let us not be unjust to this 
faithful monitor. It is a rock, and it is black, but 
it is not incapable of being gentle. We remember 
once perhaps we should say more than once, 
when it spoke with a great tenderness ; one would 
not have thought that a rock could speak in 
tones so gentle and soothing. O reader, hast thou 
ever been weary with a great Weariness, or lonely 
with a great Loneliness? Hast thou passed through 
"that great and terrible wilderness?" Hast thou 
been a sojourner in the land of Sadness and Sor- 
row? Hast thou been in the Valley of the Shadow? 
Art thou acquainted with the Dark Hour? It 
was in such an hour that the Rock, — but we will 
not speak of that. 

O Black Rock, companion, critic, counselor, 
consoler! We thank thee for thy companionship, 
thy criticism, thy counsel, thy consolation. A 
sign and symbol thou art to us of that other Rock, 
''the Rock that is higher than I,'' the ''Rock 
of Ages," the invisible, spiritual Rock of which 
it is written, "That Rock was Christ." 



XXXVI. 

THE PLANTING OF THE OAK. 

To the church of which the writer is pastor 
there is attached an ancient and interesting 
graveyard, which, though it has long since ceased 
to be used for purposes of general burial, bears 
witness, by its carefully-kept condition, to the 
congregation's reverent regard for the resting- 
place of the dead. It is a lovely spot, which is 
apt to recall to the mind of him who enters it, 
the poet Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country 
Churchyard. '\ It is a place in which to meditate 
and moralize, in which to muse on the past and the 
departed. There are graves here which are not 
without historical associations. Here is the grave 
of Jonathan Hager, the founder of the town, who 
was a member of this congregation. He was a 
friend of General Washington, and is said to have 
been the first foreigner ever naturalized in the 
United States, having been maturalized by the 
Legislature of Maryland to make him eligible as 
a member of that body. We have seen the state- 
ment that he was a volunteer captain under Gen- 
eral Braddock, in the ill-fated expedition of 1755. 
Here, also, is the grave of his son, the younger 
Jonathan, who as a boy ran away to the Rev- 

335 



336 The Planting of the Oak. 

olutionary War, and was captured by the British 
and held prisoner by them for some time at Hali- 
fax. These, with the members of their families, lie 
buried in this graveyard. Here, likewise, is the 
grave of General Daniel Hiester, a membr of 
the well-known Hiester famil}^ of Pennsylvania, 
who married Rosina, only daughter of Jonathan 
Hager; who was active in the Revolutionary 
War, and afterwards was a member of the first 
National Congress after the adoption of the 
Constitution of the United States. Another inter- 
esting grave is that of John Gruber, founder of 
the Hagerstown Almanac, which, established 
more than a hundred years ago, not only exists, 
but exists in a highly-flourishing condition to-day. 
There are in the United States many thousands 
of people who would refuse to give their entire 
confidence to any other almanac than a genuine 
'^ Gruber,'^ such as their fathers, grandfathers and 
great-grandfathers had in their households before 
them. 

The first two pastors of the congregation lie 
buried in this graveyard. The Rev. Jacob Wey- 
mer, who served the congreation from 1770 to 
1790,lies buried herein a unknown grave ; of him 
it may be said, as is said of Moses, ''No man 
knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.'' This 
does not indicate any neglect of his memory, 
for his name is held in great honor, and his person- 
ality and services in grateful remembrance, to 



The Planting of the Oak. 337 

this day; it is the result of his own expressed 
wish and direction that no tombstone should be 
placed at his grave. The writer knows, having 
learned so much many years ago from an aged 
member of the congregation, that he was buried 
in the southern portion of the graveyard, but 
the particular spot is not knoAvn. Down under 
the w^eeping willow is the grave of Mr. Weymer's 
successor, the Rev. Jonathan Rahauser, pastor 
of the congregation for nearly twenty-five years, 
from 1792 to 1817. These two alone among the 
pastors of this church died vvhile engaged in its 
service. 

Perhaps it was the weeping willow which has 
just been mentioned that suggested to the pastor's 
mind the idea of planting a tree in the churchyard. 
It is old now; it has also been somewhat injured 
by storms; it seemed proper that another tree 
should be coming on to take its place. Perhaps, 
also, the idea or intention may have been in 
part the result of the parson's love of continuity; 
his fondness for maintaing unbroken t he connec- 
tion between the present and the past, between 
the present and the future ; his sense of the interest 
and value of the outward and visible sign of such 
union and continuity. As such a sign, as a bond 
of connection between generation and generation, 
nothing could be more effective or more inter- 
esting than a living and growing tree. How valu- 
able a possession it would be for this congregation 



338 The Planting of the Oak. 

to have upon its grounds a tree planted by Father 
Weymer; and how memorable such an object 
would be, as connecting it with the times of its 
origin. Or, the parson's intention may have 
grown out of his love of trees. He is a great ad- 
mirer of trees, and loves to plant them and see 
them grow. Or, he may have been thinking of 
the time when his ministry should be past, and 
when the places which once knew him ^should 
know him no more. And he may have taken a 
half mournful pleasure in the thought that, after 
he should be gone there should be, in the neigh- 
borhood of the church, a tree planted by him, 
and known as his tree, which should serve as a 
gentle, modest and unoffending remembrancer 
of him, and as an outward and visible sign of 
his affection for the church in whose service so 
many years of his ministry were spent. 

Whatever the motive of the act may have been, 
the pastor decided to plant a tree in the church- 
yard, as, when a boy, he had planted a tree on 
the campus of the college in which he was a 
student. At first, as has been said, he thought 
of planting a weeping willow. He considered, 
however, that the weeping willow, beautiful as 
it is, is a tree of a somewhat soft nature, is liable 
to be injured by storms, and is not of as long life 
as he desired his tree to be. He wanted a tree of 
hardy nature, of slow growth, of long duration. 
Upon refieotion he chose the oak. His tree should 



The Planting of the Oak. 339 

be an oak; and, in particular, it should be a pin- 
oak, because of the specially graceful form and 
the specially beautiful foliage of that variety. 
The required oak was procured for him by his 
friend, Mr. Harry E. Strite, a great lover of trees, 
and one having extensive knowledge of them; 
who went down to Weverton, on the Potomac, 
specially for this purpose. The tree, brought 
from this locality (though there was no thought of 
this when it was obtained) seemed to the parson 
to possess a special interest and significance, 
as having grown along the Potomac, not far from 
the place where his father in his boyhood used 
to go fishing and swimming. The tree having 
thus been procured, the particular spot in which 
it should be planted was determined upon by 
consultation with Mr. W. H. McCardell, chairman 
of the Committee on Church Grounds. 

At the planting of a tree of this kind, or in the 
performance of any other significant action, of 
which it is desired that the memory should be 
preserved, it is important that there should be 
present some child or young person, as the repre- 
sentative of future time. For this reason, the par- 
son waited until the youngest son of the house 
should have come home from school, that he might 
witness the transaction. He, the youngest, alone 
of seven children, is left at home with his par- 
ents. He, too, lil^e his brothers before him, 
will go away to college in the fall — ''and then 



340 The Planting of the Oak. 

there will be none." Let him stand by, as an 
eye-witness to the planting of the oak. Years 
ago, an old man, so old that one of the recollec- 
tions of his childhood was to have seen General 
Washington, then on a visit to Hagerstown (his 
father lifting him up in the crowd that he might 
have a view of the great man speaking to the 
citizens), told us that, in his boyhood, he was 
once playing in the neighborhood of his father's 
house, two miles to the west of the town, w^hile 
the younger Jonathan Hager, above referred to, 
and some surveyors were engaged in deter- 
mining certain boundary lines. They had fix- 
ed upon a certain pine tree as a corner. Mr. 
Hager called the boy to him and said: "My boy, 
do you see this tree?" The boy said he did. 
''Look sharp," said the man; ''do you think 
you will remember it?" The boy looked sharp, 
and thought he would remember. "Look sharp 
again," said the man; "I want you never to for- 
get this tree." Then he explained the meaning 
of the tree; and then, leading him to the foot 
of it, he boxed the boy's ears, and then gave him 
a shilling. "Now," said he, "I want you to 
remember this tree as long as you live." And 
the boy did remember it as long as he lived; he 
had reasons, both of pain and pleasure, for doing 
so. It is a curious illustration of the law that 
attention is the mother of memory ; we remember 
what we attend to. This bov had had his attention 



The Plaguing of the Oak. 341 

called to the tree in a two-fold, practical and very 
impressive manner The method used in this 
instance by Mr. Hager was, we believe, an old 
method, w'ell-know^n in England centuries ago, 
for preserving and transmitting to posterity 
the memory of landmarks and other memorable 
objects. 

So the oak was planted in the presence of 
the youngest son of the house. And the older 
trees looked on; and the church, with its ancient 
walls, now in their one hundred and thirtieth 
year, and its modern tower, likewise beheld the 
scene. It was a curious intermingling of the 
past, the present and the future. A little boy 
of the neighborhood, a member of the Sunday 
School, came straying in to see what was being 
done. To him also the meaning of the tree was 
explained, and he was asked to remember it. 
The parson does not mean to claim that he him- 
self did all this work of planting. There was one 
who assisted him — perhaps it would be more 
correct to say, who was assisted by him. He 
does claim, however, to have done a considerable 
portion of the shoveling of the earth, and to have 
assisted otherw^ise in the important transaction; 
to have done enough to make the claim a real 
and not a fictitious one, that the tree was planted 
by him. 

Such was the planting of the oak. May the 
tree thus planted live, and grow, and prosper, 



342 The Planting of the Oak. 

and continue long. May the older trees of this 
ancient churchyard, the sycamore, the elm, the 
weeping willow, graciously receive it into 
their companionship. May it become a strong 
tree, capable of wrestling with the wild winds, 
that blow across this hill, and receive no injury 
from them. May it be '4ike a tree planted 
by the rivers of water;" whose leaf shall 
not wither. May the birds of the future, the 
descendants of the robin, and the red-bird, and 
the Baltimore oriole, that frequent these grounds, 
build their nests unmolested in its branches. 
In the far distant future may some one, resting 
beneath the shadow of it, think kindly of him 
by whom it was planted. Here may it stand, 
as a silent memorial of one who said his word, 
and did his work, and went his way; as the out- 
ward sign and symbol, also, of other, of invis- 
ible, things planted by him, which he trusts may 
be living and growing when he is gone. 

It was between 4 and 5 o'clock p.m., on Mon- 
day, the 25th day of April, in the year of our 
Lord nineteen hundred and four, that this thing 
was done. 



XXXVII. 
THE DESERTED HOUSE. 

It was Tennyson's poem of ''The Deserted 
House" that was in the parson's thoughts to- 
night as he unlocked the door of the parsonage 
and let himself into the dark and silent house, 
of which, for the time being, he is the solitary 
occupant. He said over to himself the lines: 

"All within is dark as night; 
In the windows is no light; 
And no murmur at the door, 
So frequent on its hinge before." 

Reader, do you know what it is to be the sole 
inhabitant of a house, once filled with bright- 
ness and activity, but now deserted and dark; 
to come into it at night, and hear no sounds save 
that of your own footfalls as you ascend the 
stairs ; to sit down alone at the table ; to listen, at 
the midnight hour, to the sound of the autumnal 
wind, now swelling high and loud, now dying soft- 
ly away with an infinitely mournful cadence? 

This house, once the scene of so much life and 
gaiety, is silent and lonely now. The seven 
children who once enlivened and gladdened it, 
who romped within its walls or shouted upon 

343 



344 The Deserted House. 

its grounds; who gathered around the table, 
morning, noon and evening ; who came and went, 
bringing into the family life the atmosphere and 
interests of the school-room or the breeziness 
of the playground, — where are they? They are 
gone, they are scattered; the youngest went to 
college in September, and the next to the young- 
est is on the sea to-night, — God be with him and 
watch over him there. And the mistress of the 
house, — she, too, has gone, for the time being, 
for a visit and a greatly-needed change and rest. 
And the colored servant, — she, likewise, took 
her departure with the close of day. To this ser- 
vant, standing respectfully by, waiter in hand, as 
he sat down to his luncheon to-day, the parson, 
perhaps somewhat weary of silence, ventured 
to remark, "Well, Mary, the family is becoming 
very small." "Yes, sah," she replied; "it's a 
gettin' mighty small, shore." These were the 
only words that were spoken. Invitations to 
dinner are not wanting; and the parson is much 
away from the house by day; but at night, 
when he returns to it, it is a lonely and deserted 
house. 

There are few parents who would not admit 
that, with all the cares and anxieties of them, 
those were their happiest days when their child- 
ren were small, and were all gathered together 
with them under the same roof. How very near 
they then seemed; how dependent they were; 



The Deserted House. 345 

how many things it was then possible and 
necessary to do for them; and out of this near- 
ness, and dependence, and these loving ser- 
vices, how much there came of comfort and 
joy and happiness to the parents' hearts. It 
is a condition which cannot and ought not to 
be permanent. We take pleasure in our chil- 
dren's groT\i}h; we would not have it otherwise. 
They must grow into self-dependence and self- 
help; and, as birds leave the nest, so the time 
comes when they must leave the shelter of the 
paternal roof and go forth into the world. Yet 
this early time of an unbroken family circle is 
a blessed thing while it lasts; and, through all 
the years that follow, is likely to be looked back 
upon as a sort of golden age in the family life. 
Lately we read of an aged woman who lay dying. 
She was nearly one hundred years of age, and 
the husband who had taken the journey with her, 
sat by her side. She was just breathing faintly, 
but suddenly she revived, opened her eyes, and 
said, ''Why! it is dark." ''Yes, Janet, it is dark." 
"Is it night?" "Oh, yes! it is midnight." 
''Are all the children in?" Her youngest child 
had been in the grave for twenty years; but she 
was living her life over again; she had gone back 
to the days when, every day, as the night came 
on, the anxious question was whether the chil- 
dren were all in. "Are all the children in?" What 
a significant question it is! They may none of 



346 The Deserted House. 

them be in; they may all of them be out in the 
wide, wide world. Yet all of them may indeed 
be 'in/' If they are within the fold; in the 
''Father's house"; in the covenant and kingdon 
of our Redeemer, Jesus Christ; then, wherever 
they may be, all is well. 

Once, years ago, on a Christmas afternoon, 
we dropped in to see a man and his wife who, 
we feared, might be feeling lonely at that time 
of festivity and family reunions. There had been 
a recent death in the house. We found them 
sitting alone by their fireside. "Well," said the 
woman. (and there was a peculiar tenderness and 
pathos in her voice), "you find us two here alone 
together; we have gone back to where we began." 
It is an experience which comes to many parents ; 
and it is partly for the sake of these that we are 
writing these words. They have reared their chil- 
ren and they have gone; distance, and in some 
cases perhaps death, has separated them from 
those they love; they have gone back to where 
they began; they are left alone. In a certain 
sense their house is left unto them desolate. 
For such it is well to remember One who was 
often "left alone," and to reflect that, for those 
who love and trust Him, there can be no entire 
and absolute loneliness, and no house can be 
altogether deserted. Into the loneliness of every 
lonely life, into the desolateness of every desert- 
ed house, comes silently, if we are willing to let 



The Deserted House. 347 

Him enter, the Great Companion. When the 
writer was young, he had a dear old friend, whom 
he would often drop in to see, and with whom 
(for he was then just learning that beautiful 
language) he was accustomed to practise the 
speaking of German. Sometimes he would find 
him sitting entirely alone, in meditative mood, 
with his hands folded before him. Then he 
would say, "Sie sind allein?" And the old man, 
with a beautiful smile, would reply, in the words 
of a well-known German hymn: ''Allein, und 
doch nicht ganz allein." "Alone, and yet not 
all alone," — ^this may well be the language of 
every child to God, to whose lot it may at any 
time fall to be left alone. 

Let us look backward; but let us also look 
forward; forward to the time when changes and 
partings shall no more take place. Many years 
ago, not long after the writer had entered the 
ministry, he remembers once to have passed a 
Sunday in a strange town, and to have attended 
divine service in the Presbyterian Church. He 
will never forget the sermon preached on that 
occasion. It was from the text, '^And He led 
them forth by the right way, that they might 
go to a city of habitation." We remember, 
especially, the stress which the preacher laid 
upon the expression, "a city of habitation," as 
an expression implying continuance, permanence, 
unchangeableness. We remember, also, the 



348 The Deserted House, 

use which he made, in this connection, of the 
promise that from the heavenly city the redeemed 
'^ shall go no more out." It is a promise the 
deep and tender meaning of which comes home 
to every one who feels the changeableness and 
evanescence of our earthly life; how man "fieeth, 
as it were, a shadow, and never continueth in 
one stay;" how our family circles are break- 
ing up, and our homes dissolving; how from 
our earthly homes those whom we love are 
continually "going out." The father, look- 
ing for the last time upon the face of his boy, 
as he goes forth into the world to seek his 
fortune; the mother, kissing her daughter good- 
bye, as she crosses the threshold of her home, to 
go as a missionary to far-off India or Africa, — 
these know what the promise means that from 
the city of God there shall be no more going out. 
We cannot reproduce the preacher's beautiful 
words, but something like this he said. It is 
worth while to think much of the time when, and 
the place from which, they shall'' go no more out." 
There shall be no parting there; and no farewell 
word shall ever be spoken. "And God shall 
wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there 
shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor cry- 
ing, neither shall there be any more pain." 

Past midnight in the deserted house; it is a 
time and a place for many thoughts and many 
memories. In what a weird way, at this mystic 



The Deserted House. 349 

hour, the past seems to come back and mingle 
with the present. That sound we seemed to hear 
just now upon the stairway, — was it the footsteps 
of a little girl coming with her book to the study 
to say her lesson? That voice which seemed 
just now to fall upon the ear, — was it the voice 
of a little boy, a little boy with golden hair and 
deep blue eyes? Nay; it was but the wind. They 
are gone ; those days are gone ; and those are gone 
whose presence once filled with brightness and 
merriment the walls of this now deserted nouse. 
The wind is growing wilder and louder; may there 
be no storm on the sea to-night. It is late; let 
us lay aside our writing and go to our rest, think- 
ing of the time when we shall come to ''a city of 
habitation/' and when those who dwell therein 
''shall go no more out.'' 



DEC, 16 'y** 



DEC i©130^ 



